


you drew stars around my scars

by ivyrobinson



Series: death by a thousand cuts [1]
Category: Anastasia (1997), Anastasia - Flaherty/Ahrens/McNally
Genre: F/M, road trip technically
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-10-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:46:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 23,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25518274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivyrobinson/pseuds/ivyrobinson
Summary: prequel to death by a thousand cuts and afterglow. anya needs to move across country to new york. vlad and dmitry need someone who could be the kidnapped romanov heiress to bring to new york.
Relationships: Dimitri | Dmitry/Anya | Anastasia Romanov (Anastasia 1997 & Broadway)
Series: death by a thousand cuts [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1605637
Comments: 90
Kudos: 48





	1. prologue

_Anastasia: Age 7_

Anastasia Romanov’s father promised to pick her up from ballet class personally. This is not the first time he’s promised this, and if he doesn’t show up- the fact class ended ten minutes ago is making it clear he may not- it won’t be the first time he’s broken that promise. 

She stares at her pinky and wonders if it’ll fall off because it is the first time he’s pinky promised her he would be there and the first time he’s broken a pinky promise. 

The teacher’s assistant, Marco, has his arms folded, and keeps looking at his watch. 

Finally, a black town car pulls up and she can hear Marco let out a sigh of relief. The window rolls down and an unfamiliar woman is there. Anastasia deflates because this is also not the first time he’s sent one of his employees to come get her. 

Then her heartbeat speeds up because now she worries something has happened to little Alexei and maybe her parents are at the hospital with him and she’s being selfish by being upset by her father’s failure to pick her up again. 

“Privyet,” the woman greets her in Russian. 

“Has Papa sent you?” Anastasia asks and waves to Marco and he grabs his bike to leave. 

The woman just stares at her so Anastasia repeats her question in Russian. 

“Yes,” she responds, still speaking in Russian. Anastasia has known Russian for her entire life but it takes her a moment to process what’s being said. 

“Did something happen to Alexei?” Anastasia asks, making sure to ask it in Russian. 

“Yes,” the woman says, and she’s not as friendly as her father’s other assistants. They usually make sure to be extra friendly to her. “They need a break from you, it’s too much for them to handle.” 

Anastasia’s lower lip trembles at that, because she had made a mess the night before and Mama had gotten awfully upset at her. She had even said she didn’t know what to do with her sometimes, which she said quite a few times. She guessed she had found the solution. 

“My sisters?” 

“They need a break from you too,” the woman tells her and glances up to see the tears in her eyes. “No crying.” She reaches into her bag and pulls out a small bottle of water, unscrews the cap and hands it to her. “Drink this.” 

Anastasia just nods, not trusting herself to not cry if she speaks and she takes a sip of the water. The woman stares at her when she goes to set it down so she takes another sip and another. Finally the woman stops looking at her and she wonders if she has mentioned her name and she can’t remember. 

She brings her hand up to her mouth to hide a yawn, and her eyes grow heavy and flutter shut and she wants to stay awake because she’ll feel like she’ll be in trouble if she falls asleep. But she can’t fight the dark creeping over her and then she’s fast asleep in the car.


	2. chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks to everyone willingly choosing to come back to this devastating universe with me. and I know taylor swift doesn’t need the promo but buy and stream folklore!!

_Anya: Age 18_

Being kicked out at the age of 18 is what Anya expects, but it’s still jarring to come back from the restaurant to find all her meager belongings haphazardly packed on the front porch of her foster house. It comes with instructions to leave her key in the mailbox. 

Well, fuck. She picks up her backpack and suitcase, she feels for the envelope in the hidden part of her jacket that holds her savings. She learned her lesson the first month of having a job back when she was fourteen and her foster brother at the time went through her shit and stole all her money and when she went to complain, her foster parents decided if she had a job then part of the money should be going to them to help clothes and feed her, even though the government already did that for her. The slap she’s gotten for that had left a mark that hadn’t faded for several days. 

She wouldn’t miss any of the places she had lived since she was about ten and her parents had decided it was too much trouble taking care of a child and had left her abandoned outside an Orthodox Church in the middle of the night. 

She didn’t miss them either. Her parents and her aunt, she can’t even really picture them in her mind now. When she tries to think of her childhood, her head hurts and there are sorts of shadows and things that don’t quite make sense to her. 

Everything about her life felt slightly off but life was unfair to most that Anya had met throughout her life. 

The old cellphone in her pocket is low on battery and minutes and she’s not even certain who she could call and who would let her crash with them for an indeterminate amount of time. 

Time- She'd hoped for a little more time so she could save up to go to New York and be able to live somewhere for a few months while she found a job. And look for what she felt was there. 

It’s stupid, she knows. So many people here dream of going to New York, and can feel it calling to her while she sleeps. And it is what everyone else claims but it’s so far in her bones she can’t not at least go there. She’s not even certain what she’s looking for when she gets there, but maybe it’ll present itself to her when she arrives. 

Anya is aware of the many delusions she has. 

She ends up checking into a women’s shelter for the evening, taking a cot in the corner, her jacket zipped up tight around her, her belongings shoved between the wall and her body as though any of this will prevent someone from stealing from her if they want to. 

Anya is plagued with nightmares, and no one seems to know how to cure them and it’s made her go from foster family to foster family, no one having the patience or desire to deal with them. She takes some calming breaths before she falls asleep, and prayers they stay away on this night so she’s not on the street in the middle of the night. 

-

Anya doesn’t sleep much, but what she does sleep seems to be restful enough, no one is staring or glaring at her as she lifts her head, blinking herself into wakefulness. 

She takes her belongings with her when she goes to the kitchen, putting rubbery pancakes and runny scrambled eggs onto a plate and pouring herself a burnt cup of coffee and sitting at the edge of a table. 

She tries to make herself invisible, trying to gather her thoughts and formulate a plan. She can’t stay in New Mexico. It might take months or years but she has to start heading towards New York. 

It doesn’t work, a girl a few seats away from her turns in her suit, studying her. 

“What’re you running from?” The girl asks. 

Anya’s never run away from anything in her life, she’s constantly being held back from running towards something. “Nothing. Turned 18.” 

The girl draws in a breath, “Yikes.” 

“Running towards something,” Anya continues. 

“Towards what?” 

“Not sure,” she admits. “Just feel like it’s in New York.”

The girl snorts, the appropriate reaction Anya knows. But then she says, “Sounds like you need to see Dmitry.”

Anya blinks, confused and unfamiliar with the phrase. “What does that mean?”

“It means you need to see Dmitry,” the girl laughs, reaching into her own bag and ripping a receipt in half and writing something on the back and sliding it to her. “He’s always got some scheme or another to head east.”

“Who is he?” She asks, reading an unfamiliar address before folding it up and tucking it into her pocket. 

“One of us,” the girl gestures around the room. “Well, minus the whole gender thing. What’s your name?”

“Anya,” she answers softly. 

“Eryn,” the girl points at herself. “If you’re going to get help from a man, Dmitry’s a decent sort. No whispers about him.” 

Anya winces but appreciates the review. It’s hard to trust strangers, and she always learns this the hard way. 

“Thank you,” Anya tells her, “Anything I can do for you?”

Eryn laughs and shakes her head, “Nope, learned to do everything for myself. Go see Dmitry and see if you can get yourself out of here.” 

Well, as far as plans go it’s barely one but it’s more than she’s been able to come up with. 

-

Anya works that afternoon, and has to wait until the evening to venture out. Unfamiliar with the address, Anya splurges and takes a taxi to the address Eryn supplied to her. It leads her to a worn down building and even the taxi driver shoots her a sympathetic look as she’s being dropped off. 

Anya wonders if she shouldn’t have trusted Eryn, but adjusts the straps of her backpack and tilts her chin up and marches on. 

She knocks on the door of the building. It doesn’t look like a home, more like an office or school or something. 

She ends up in a room with rotting wood and cobwebs. It looks like it should be shut down by the city with contamination warnings everywhere. 

“Excuse me?” Anya calls out. She half expects to run into the otherworldly here, like the people inhabiting it couldn’t possibly be real. She hears a noise and swallows her fear, “I’m looking for Dmitry?”

Her breath comes out in puffs when she speaks, a cold desert night. 

There’s a noise, and a sigh, “I’m Dmitry.”

Then out steps a taller boy, can’t be that much older than her. Anya’s not certain what she’s expecting but someone around her own age is most definitely not it. 

This can not be the Dmitry she was looking for.

His clothes are well worn and fraying, “What do you want?”

Anya’s distracted from answering by another noise and an older man steps out. She takes a step back, he’s more well established and what she was expecting when she was told to go to Dmitry for help, but a second man wasn’t mentioned. 

She pulls her jacket around her, even though it can’t get much tighter around her. “Was told you could help get me to the east coast.” 

“I can,” he answers slowly, measuring her as much as she’s currently measuring him. “For a price.” 

Anya deflates at that because she doesn’t have money and could get her own fare if that’s something she had. Another thought occurs to her. 

“What kind of price?” 

“Not that,” he tells her, and sits down in a chair. “Vlad and I are planning a trip to New York and might have a spot open for someone else.”

There’s a catch, and she knows it. “But?” 

“We’re heading there to reunite Anastasia Romanov with her family,” he answers, as though that’s not an absurd statement to make. “So we only have room for Anastasia.”

She’s as familiar with Anastasia’s story as anyone who's turned on the news is in the past ten years. 

Anya can’t help but let out a short burst of laughter at that. “You’re crazy, Anastasia’s probably buried in some creepy man’s backyard and has been for a decade now.” 

Dmitry shrugs, not concerned at all with the detail that the kidnapped heiress has been looked for and searched for all over the country for the past eleven years and no ones been able to find a trace of her. 

Just thinking about it is enough to make Anya feel woozy. Or it could be the fact that the pancakes and eggs were the only thing she’s had to eat for the day. 

“You should sit,” Vlad tells her, guiding her over to a chair. “Dmitry, go get her some water and something to eat.” 

Dmitry mumbles something about this not being a soup kitchen and disappears. The room feels less tense without him there. 

“Excuse him,” Vlad says, patting her shoulder. “He’s a bit rough around the edges.” 

“Aren’t we all?” Anya retorts, feeling a bit better now that she’s sitting. 

He just smiles kindly at her in return, “What’s your story, dear? Your name?” 

“Anya,” she responds and Dmitry is back with a granola bar and just seeing it makes her stomach rumble. He hands her a bottle of water and a feeling of unease rolls over her. 

It must show on her face because he says, “It hasn’t been open yet.” 

Anya drops the granola bar to her lap and unscrews the cap of the bottle and drinks from it. 

“I just turned eighteen,” she tells Vlad, answering his other question. “Foster parents kicked me out for it.” 

Vlad nods as she opens the granola bar, taking a small bite of it, not wanting to eat it as greedily as she feels. “How long have you been in foster care for?” 

Anya swallows, “Eight years.”

“And before then, if I may ask?” He’s much more polite than Dmitry, who is still hovering above her. 

She shrugs, “My parents and aunt before they didn’t want to deal with a kid anymore and dropped me off at a church.” 

“Doesn’t that strike you as odd?” Dmitry asks, speaking for the first time since giving her the water. 

Anya looks up at him, her eyes meeting his and her chest feels suddenly tight. “Parents abandon children all the time.” 

He looks like he wants to argue with her, but that might be his natural expression. But he doesn’t say anything. 

“And now you’re looking to head east?” Vlad asks, pulling her attention back to him. 

She takes another sip of water, “New York. There’s just...something, whenever I see New York City, it just feels like home.”

Vlad nods, like he understands and now she’s been told the bad news and had something small to eat she should stop wasting her time here. Should’ve known better than to get her hopes up from a tip by a random stranger. 

But then he says something crazier than Dmitry did before, “You know...Anastasia’s family live in New York City.” 

It takes a moment for her to process what he’s saying and she’s standing up, the folding chair she had been sitting on falling over from the force of the sudden movement. 

Her and Dmitry end up speaking at the same time, “I’m not…” “There’s no way she’s…”

Vlad holds his hand up, silencing them both. 

“Anya,” he says her name in a gentle tone, “How much do you remember of your childhood with your parents and aunt?” 

Anya blinks, her head already hurting from trying to think that far back. “Not much. Just a couple years before they abandoned me, I guess.” 

A couple years would place her memories to be around 7 or 8 years old to the age of 10 and just no it’s not possible but now Dmitry’s got a different expression on his face when he looks at her. 

“Two women and a man were arrested for the kidnapping,” Dmitry speaks up. “Wouldn’t say what happened to her.” 

Oh good, now both men were equally crazy. She was never getting out of New Mexico. 

“There’s a resemblance,” Vlad presses on, pulling the photo that’s been shown in the news for years. The little girl has a face shape similar to hers, but it’s not a rare type of shape, her eyes are blue and her blonde hair several shades lighter than Anya’s currently is and a little less strawberry. 

“We are females with blue eyes,” is all she’ll admit however. 

“She would’ve turned eighteen this month,” Vlad points out. “Didn’t you turn 18?”

“Yes on June 18th,” Anya answers. She points at the information below the photo, Vlad’s showing her. “Hers is June 5th.” 

“What kidnapper would keep the same exact birthday?” Dmitry questions. “Doesn’t mean you’re her,” he agrees. “But if you get to New York and the family says you’re not it-no harm, no foul, right?” And then he says the line to sell it. “And you’ll be in New York.” 

Anya’s not certain what she’s looking for in New York but fuck it, if she’s going to follow absurd dreams she may as well start at the most insane top and work her way down.


	3. chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> should mention the timeline:   
> Anastasia kidnapped in 1999, foster care in 2002, current time in this is 2010 and dbatc takes place 2019

Anya finds she enjoys Vlad’s company. He takes her and Dmitry to a diner to discuss Anastasia’s past, as though the simple act of reciting knowledge would be enough to make her wake up one day and truly believe she’s the most heiress. 

He’s a bit silly, and it’s hard to take him seriously but he has a kindness about him she appreciates. He’s a well meaning Uncle figure, while Dmitry is all harsh angles and a cold demeanor

Dmitry’s handsome in an undeniable way, that he’s far too aware of. It makes him an unbearable companion but Anya finds she can’t complain much. Not when he flashes a dimple at the waitress and suddenly their to go containers are filled with entire entrees instead of the meager leftovers that had been on the plate, or when they’re at the market and end up purchasing what they need at a fraction of a price with only a few words of flirtations. 

It’d be impressive, if he wasn’t such a dick to her. 

She still thinks they’re both crazy, but no other solution to her current troubles are manifesting themselves in front of her. 

She gets off work, and goes to the address Vlad had given her when they had parted ways the day before. She still stays at the women’s shelter, nowhere else to go until they’re on the road. 

But first, she must learn her potential history. 

Anya knocks on the door, the neighborhood not much better than the one she currently crashes in. The apartment is rather barren and void of personality. There’s a corner full of tools and trinkets that look vaguely interesting. 

And a very ugly couch. 

Dmitry opens the door and lets her in, walking away without a word. The apartment seems empty except for the two of them. They’ve never been alone without Vlad’s presence before and something about it seems off. 

Anya chooses to focus on the ugly couch. “I think this couch has a better personality than you do.”

Dmitry snorts, sitting down on a chair in the corner work area. 

Her curiosity gets the better of her, “What are you doing?” 

“My job,” he says, not looking up from what he’s doing. 

Anya takes a step forward, trying to get a better look at it. “You mean to say your regular job isn’t reuniting kidnap victims with their wealthy families?” 

Dmitry sighs, and glances up at her briefly as though trying to evaluate exactly how annoying she can get. Apparently very annoying because he finally offers, “I fix antiques.”

She wrinkles her nose at that, “Isn’t the charm that people buy as is?” 

“No one actually wants a broken thing,” he tells her, as he pops open a panel on a small wooden clock. “They want the aesthetic with a shiny new inside.”

Just like Anya, in a way. 

She sits on a corner of the couch, it looks clean but you never knew with boys. “How did you get started with that?”

Anya doesn’t think she’s actually interested, she just has a strong distaste for the quiet. 

Dmitry seems to feel the opposite because he sighs and instead of answering her question, he asks, “Where is Vlad?” 

“Shouldn’t you know?” Anya shoots back, but the question no longer is relevant because the door opens a Vlad walks in, carrying a box. 

Dmitry mutters something under his breath and she decides she doesn’t need to figure out what he said because she can tell enough from the general tone. 

“Sorry kids,” Vlad announces as he drops the box to the floor. “Had a bit of trouble with this on the bus.” 

She would’ve assumed they lived near each other. Maybe he had to go somewhere else to get whatever this box was. 

Anya wishes she didn’t know when Vlad opens the box up and pulls out a Time magazine with a young girl with Anya’s eyes on the cover of it. She feels queasy about it now, even though she’s seen that exact photo multiple times over the years. It’s the favorite of the media to use of Anastasia. 

“Some research,” Vlad announces and Dmitry puts down his tools to walk over and grab the magazine from Vlad. She can see other magazines in the box. 

Anya pulls her sleeves over her hands, “I’m not going to lie.” 

“We aren’t going to have you lie, darling,” Vlad says, coming over to sit next to her on the sofa. “These are just to go over and see if anything connects with you.”

She’s not stupid and Dmitry glances over at Vlad, a look of warning. At least he has one redeeming quality of not thinking she’s a total ditz. 

“Anya,” Dmitry says, and she blinks because she doesn’t think he’s used her name directly before. “What do you remember of your childhood?”

Anya thinks about it, pushes past the headache and cloudy confusion that sometimes accompanies it. “My first foster family was-“

“No,” Dmitry interrupts her. “Before foster care. What is your earliest memory?”

“I…” she searches her brain. She remembers moving quite a bit with her parents. Her mother and aunt had short tempers, she could never do anything right. Anya can’t exactly recall what she was doing right, but they weren’t ever satisfied with what she was doing. Her father ignored her. Her father in memory is of the back of his head, he was always glancing away from her, smoking a cigarette. She can’t even recall what his face looks like, her mother and aunt are blurry figures of the past as well, but she remembers the back of her father’s head and the smell of cigarette smoke with clarity. What does she remember other than car rides, cigarette smoke and harsh smacks on her lower arm? “My… aunt picked me up from ballet class?” 

That couldn’t be right. She has never danced ballet. 

Vlad and Dmitry exchange a look and she ignores it in favor of focusing on the wave of nausea she’s feeling. 

“You took ballet?” Vlad asks her, his tone slipping into something more gentle. 

“No,” her denial comes out forceful and her head feels like it’s about to split open. Anya forces herself to take a deep breath. “I mean, I don’t really remember. We moved around a lot so if I did, I didn’t keep up with it.” 

She can’t picture her harsh, impatient parents taking the care to sign her up for dance class and bringing her to and from class every week. They didn’t even enroll her in school. Her first memory of the classroom was when she was ten, sitting with teachers trying to figure out where she’d be placed. 

They called her naturally bright. 

“Do you know the circumstances of Anastasia’s kidnapping?” Vlad asks her as Dmitry leafs through the magazine. 

Anya sighs, “One of the kidnappers posed as one of her father’s assistants and picked her up while they had created a diversion at his work to make him late.” 

“Where did they pick her up from?” Vlad asks her and she shrugs. People loved to debate whether or not a seven year old should’ve blindly got into a strangers car and what it meant if this was a common occurrence of her parents sending random employees to pick up their children. They never talked much about the details. “Ballet class.” 

“Ah,” Anya says, unimpressed. Maybe that’s where the weird, stray memory came from. Of course she’d never taken ballet class. She’d just been living and breathing Anastasia Romanov the past couple weeks and she must have heard that portion before and it seeped into her subconscious. 

Dmitry drops the magazine onto her lap. Bright blue eyes and a sunny smile stare up at her. She gives a silent apology to the girl, having to borrow her skin to escape her own shitty existence. 

“There’s a couple driving out to Oklahoma next week,” Dmitry tells her. “Said they can give us a ride out as far as the pan handle, if we’re ready.” 

Anya gulps, everything suddenly moving fast, her heartbeat quickening. She wants to leave so bad but now doesn’t feel ready for it. She pushes it aside. 

“How do you know them?” It feels a ridiculous question to ask, given she’s already trusting two strangers with her wellbeing. Maybe she is Anastasia, climbing into a car with anyone who says they’ll take her home. 

Dmitry hesitates, so Vlad is the one that answers. “They’re a part of a small group of people who believe Anastasia is alive and just want to see her reunited with her family.” 

She hates the feeling of taking advantage of people, knows what it’s like after a lifetime of being taken advantage of herself. But if they’re already heading that way, and if nothing about Anya’s life adds up when she tries to remember her single digit years, then they aren’t doing any extra harm. 

It’s hard to be poor and desperate and still hold onto the morals you wish to have. 

Maybe she’ll keep a list to everyone who helped out on their way there, and when she’s not Anastasia, but back on her feet, she can send some sort of gift of gratitude for wasting their time and getting their hopes up. 

“So they’ll have questions,” she states flatly. 

“You don’t have to lie,” Dmitry tells her. “Just tell your life story. You were put into foster care by these people who you were with and don’t really remember your life before that.” 

“Won’t they think that’s a lie?” Anya asks, turning the magazine over so the advertisement for Dawson’s Creek season premiere stares at her instead. 

Uneasy about the potential of being left on the highway the moment something she says feels false. 

Dmitry shrugs, unconcerned about that and says, “Tell them about the ballet.”


	4. chapter 3

The couple offers her the front seat, it as much as Dmitry gets on her nerves, Anya feels even less comfortable sitting up front with an Anastasia Romanov conspiracy theorist eager to interview the girl he believes might be her. Instead, she ends up in the middle seat in the back, wedged between Vlad and Dmitry. The seats are lumpy and a bit lopsided so she ends up with her legs pressed against Dmitry’s and she feels vaguely motion sick. 

He keeps glancing at her, as though he can sense her dizzy, nauseated feeling, and he can’t get any closer to the door if he tried. 

They stop at a diner, not unlike the ones back in New Mexico and it suddenly becomes real that she’s really leaving. She has no idea what the hell she’s doing but she’s more free than she can ever remember being in this life. She’s caught between feeling thrilled and frightening. 

Anya sits next to Dmitry, finding it easier to shrink beside him. Vlad is overly social and careless and has a tendency to try and draw her into conversation. Dmitry is social, and surprisingly charming- to people other than her, but seems to understand the less attention given to her the better. 

It doesn’t work, now that everything is stopped and they’re waiting for food. She’s sipping on tea, her body currently unable to handle any caffeine or jitters. She’d spent a lot of the car ride dozing, or pretending to doze, her head rolling over to press against Dmitry’s shoulder when she actually was asleep. 

She’d awaken to the faint scent of lemongrass and the warmth of his skin. 

“So Anya is what they call you?” The driver, Larry, asks her. He’s got curly hair and wire frames glasses and seems nice enough even though the entire situation puts her at unease. “Not usually a nickname for Anastasia.” 

Dmitry’s hand is on her bare knee, squeezing it before she can answer and her heart gives a weird stutter. “Think they wanted to keep it close but different enough.” 

Anya regains the breath she seems to have lost a moment before. “It’s better than Stacey.” 

Larry’s boyfriend, Dave, gives a soft laugh at that. 

She wonders if they can buy scratch tickets at the next gas stop. There’s so little money, but winning any sort of lottery feels like it would speed up the process and they could be in New York in hours instead of however long it’ll take them to get there this way. 

“Vlad says you’ve been in the foster care system,” Dave speaks up, as the waitress brings them their food. “This whole time?” 

“Eight years,” she answers, and Dmitry’s hand leaves her knee to handle his food. Her legs are covered in goosebumps from the cold. Anya refuses to tell lies. “A man and two women dropped me off at a church when I was ten.” 

The two men exchange a look. She can feel the undercurrent of excitement and her stomach turns. Talking about Anastasia ruins the fries she’s nibbling on. 

“And the three years before then?” 

“We moved around a lot,” Anya answers. She’s not given her parents and aunt much thought since she was thirteen and resolves to no longer cry over their abandonment. “They were pretty paranoid.” 

This is not a lie, but she didn’t remember this until the words started coming out of her mouth. Her parents speaking in low, rough voices, always in Russian. She used to be slapped on the mouth or locked in rooms at her first foster homes, she struggled so much with remembering to speak English. 

The three of them never went anywhere together, always separately. They’d lock Anya in a bedroom if they all had different places to go at the same time. If they needed to bring her with them, they’d leave her in the car as much as possible, making her huddle on the floor. 

Her aunt would talk fast and with suspicion everytime a neighbor was nice to them. One time her mother went out to dinner with a coworker for a temp job she was working and an hour after she came back, her aunt had them all packed up and they disappeared into the night to another home. 

“Why’d they give you up to the church?” Larry asks, shoveling scrambled eggs into his mouth. 

Anya feels her throat closing up at the question, and Dmitry’s hand is on her knee again, and for some reason it relaxes her. All she manages as an answer is a shrug. 

“Probably thought it’d be easier to be on the run without the evidence of their crime,” Dave offers. 

Larry nods, his attention fully on his boyfriend as though they’re not there. “So why not just kill her?” 

Anya’s stomach recoils and she really wants to throw up. 

Dmitry reaches around her and he must do something to Vlad because she feels him start next to her. 

“Not a pleasant conversation for lunch,” Vlad speaks up and the guys blink as though casually discussing that she should’ve been murdered- or rather Anastasia but they don’t know the difference- in front of her was a normal thing. “Where did you say you two were heading again?” 

The two guys launch into a detail of their trip, something about college but she zones out. Her sandwich, already a bland affair, looks even more unappetizing. Anya knows she should eat, knows she’ll regret it if she doesn’t but can’t bring herself to make the motion of eating. 

She slides out her chair and walks outside, going to side on the sidewalk. If the four men leave her here for failing to be a good Anastasia, so be it. 

She wonders if life was ever easy, if she has happy memories tucked away in her head. Why there’s a part of her that’s always been so god damn sure that everything will work out okay if she can just cross the country and get to New York. Wonders why she has the same freckles and eyes as a girl who was stolen away from her family. Wonders why she even bothers pretending like she could’ve ever had such a life of warmth and riches. 

Anya bites her lower lip, she’s not a crier. Not any more. She’s just lost, lonely and hungry even though the knots in her stomach try to convince her otherwise. 

A shadow passes over her and she braces herself for the lecture she’s about to receive. She can tell by the silhouette and the boots that it’s Dmitry and not Vlad. She’s glad it’s not the two other strangers at least. 

Instead he hands her down a styrofoam container, crouching down beside her. 

She places it on her lap, a thank you on the tip of her tongue that she can’t seem to force out. 

“You can’t keep wearing all your emotions on your face like that,” he tells her, and she’s glad she didn’t thank him. 

“I don’t,” she replies because she doesn’t. She’s spent years training against giving herself away between working as a waitress and having to go from foster family to foster family. 

He shrugs, clearly not wanting to argue with her over this. “Told them you were feeling a bit car sick.” 

Anya clutches the container in her hands, unsure if she should try eating it now or not. She flips the lid open and picks up the pickle that came with her club sandwich and fries. “Thought you only told lies?” 

It’s enough to get a smile out of him, something she rare sees aimed at her, and rarely sees a genuine smile aimed at others. His dimple pops against his jawline. “Tell enough and eventually you’ll say something true without meaning to.”

Anya rolls her eyes and finishes the pickle, all she can handle at the moment. It’s good to have something to eat later, maybe after Dave and Larry have dropped them off and she can just be Anya again. 

Dmitry has other plans because he pops open her container again, reaching in to hand her one fourth of the sandwich. “If you end up in the hospital, it’s just going to take us all the longer to get to New York and I don’t think you have health insurance anymore.”

She scowls but nibbles on a piece of the sandwich. The bread is dry and the turkey is rubbery. 

“Dmitry?” She asks as he’s standing back up. He glances down at her. “Can we buy a scratch ticket at the next station?” 

She expects an argument, they’re both good for that. Or to be mocked. She had accidentally revealed she had seen a psychic on the morning of her eighteenth birthday- before she had gone to work, before she had been kicked out, and Dmitry hadn’t let it go for days. 

The psychic had told her she’d meet a kindred spirit soon, but so far all she’d met was Dmitry, Vlad and two people overly invested in the kidnapping of a seven year old girl a decade before. 

“Sure,” is what he says, with a shrug. “Just don’t let Vlad see, he gets a bit crazy when he starts buying them.” 

It’s almost enough to make her smile.


	5. chapter 4

Their time in Oklahoma stretches out into weeks, coming to a standstill as far as favors go. There’s a person who is away for the summer, part of this weird group of Anastasia supporters and conspiracy theorists, that allow them to stay in their apartment rent free. 

Anya gets a job cleaning at a motel a few blocks away, Dmitry gets a job at the bar and Vlad, well she’s not entirely certain that his job isn’t fucking the landlady so she’s doesn’t ask too many questions. Anya does not want to ask any questions about that. She just knows she sleeps in the bedroom, Dmitry sleeps on the couch in the living room and she has no idea where Vlad rests his head. 

She hardly sees either of them, her shifts are early and Dmitry’s shifts are late and they always seem to pass each other going to and fro. Anya collects the clothing that people carelessly leave behind and it seems fitting for her to sit around in sweaters that don’t belong to her. 

It’s a calmer existence. She’s not certain if she’s getting used to it or if it’s the lack of pressure on her since they’re operating more on their own and people are providing their help long distance. 

The only thing that constricts her chest is when she goes into a bathroom to clean and the room is overwhelmingly filled with the smell of hair dye. She only knows it to be so because it brings her back to a strange memory, about ten years earlier of being in a cramped gas station bathroom with her mother and aunt. Her aunt’s got her head tilted back as they lather Anya’s hair in dye, the smell making her gag. She remembers her nose being plugged by a dye covered glove and a warning they’ll keep her like this the entire time if she doesn’t stop her coughing. 

She reminds her head being forced under a sink to rinse it out, the dark dye altering her appearance before her eyes as her mother took scissors to her hair, cutting it shorter and giving her bangs. 

Her memory recalls what she looked like after that but the image of what she had looked like before is blurry and out of focus. 

The memory bothered her so much, she couldn’t sleep and had asked a drowsy Dmitry, upon his return why someone would dye an eight year old’s hair, and recounted the story as he stared at her blankly. At the end he had just looked at her strangely before throwing out that it sounds like something kidnappers would do, and then had passed out on the sofa. 

Anya’s been irritated with the joke, but sometimes she wondered if he had been joking at all. 

When she’s at the apartment, she takes care to clean and organize as the actual tenant seems to have not given it a second thought. She replaces food items the moment they’re out of them, trying to buy a larger size as though that’ll repay taking advantage of a stranger’s kindness. 

Dmitry tells her she frets too much, and that the girl’s parents pay for her rent and would do so if she had left the place unoccupied during the time they stayed there. 

She’s never learned to not feel like an imposition. 

“I bought us a car,” Dmitry announces one day, when he’s awake earlier than normal and is freshly showered so he no longer smells of cigarettes and booze. Vlad has stopped by with roadmaps and a collection of names. 

Anya’s eating lunch, her day off and her plans of reading books she’s found on the shelf have already been ruined by Vlad’s presence and now Dmitry’s too, and she drops her spoon back into her bowl. 

“Can we afford that?” She immediately looks to Vlad, who seems unconcerned that Dmitry’s spent his money on expensive machinery. 

Dmitry rolls his eyes, and it’s good to see these weeks of barely missing each other has not cured his impatience with her. “It’s not going to last the whole trip. It was only a couple hundred dollars and I have a few things I need to tweak on it before we can head back out.” 

“I thought you guys had a plan, connections,” Anya points out, gesturing to Vlad’s messy planner of names and addresses. 

“We do,” Dmitry says, and he’s not meeting her gaze. “But this way we don’t have to rely on strangers for a little while at least, you know?”

Oh. They both refuse to acknowledge that he’s doing this for her and her own unease. Something unfurls in her chest. 

Anya swallows, “How long do we have? I want to make arrangements to collect my paycheck before we leave.” 

Dmitry thinks about it, “10 days should do it.” Vlad nods. “We can take turns driving.” 

The panic returns. “I don’t know how to drive.” 

He looks unsurprised by this. “Good thing we have so much open road for you to learn on.” 

The only thing the girl asked for in exchange for letting them stay at her apartment is a personalized note from Anastasia herself. 

Anya bites her lip to keep out the distaste, writing a thank you note and simply signing it with an A. A compromise because she wants to keep to as many truths as possible. 

She expects Dmitry to say something, or to forge the rest of the name for her but he simply shrugs and hoists the second bag of forgotten clothes she’s collected up for her. 

-

Dmitry is a terrible teacher and Vlad is a terrible driver, but still they insist on taking back roads, long winding stretches of pavement and dirt. Impatient instructions and Vlad dramatically holding on for dear life in the back. As if he has any right to speak. She finally crossed the threshold from feeling car sick to actually getting car sick the first time he drove. 

Between that and the close quarters, and the added driving time, it’s a perfect recipe for irritation.

“You’re going to kill this car!” Dmitry complains as it makes a terrible grinding noise as she tries to shift. 

Anya gestures wildly around the car, “It’s already a corpse!” 

“You both will be if I don’t get some sleep,” Vlad groans from the backseat. 

Anya lets out a growl because a driving lesson is never a good time to try to take a nap so really that is on him. 

“You drive!” She tells Dmitry, roughly pulling over and doing some version of stopping.

He winces at the sound the car makes as she does. “I can’t be the only one who is driving.” 

Anya hops out anyway, slamming the door shut and he follows. She’s cranky and tired and she just wants to be in a world where she fits in and she’s never had that. At least not that she can recall. 

“Learn how to teach,” she throws at him. 

“I know how to teach!” Dmitry claims, his hand running through his hair in frustration. “You know how many girls I taught to drive before you?” 

Anya makes a face at him, “Don’t be a braggart.” 

“Not like that,” he ground out, but he opens the driver’s door as she gets into the passenger seat. “I’m going to teach you if it kills me.” 

“Promise?” She asks. 

He throws her a look but doesn’t respond to that, “We’re going to pick up some camping equipment so we don’t have to waste money on hotels.” 

“I don’t need a tent,” Anya tells him, “I can just sleep in the car.” 

“It’s going to get humid and suffocate you,” he warns her. 

“I’ve slept in worse,” she tells him. “I’ll survive just fine.”

Dmitry doesn’t answer, and Vlad gets his wish for some peace and quiet in the car. 

-

She hates when Dmitry’s right. The car is hot and stuffy and sweat drips down her and she can’t breathe as she tries to sleep. She’s not parked too far away from where Dmitry’s set up his tent. He made sure to point it out to her before leaving for the evening, an annoying smugness about him because he knew how much she’d suffer. 

Anya hasn’t seen Vlad in hours. They’d be invited to eat with two widows for dinner and they’d lost Vlad to them, she can only assume. 

She’s attempted to roll down a window and that only makes the air more thick and unbearable and she feels vulnerable and unprotected with the window cracked open, alone in eastern Oklahoma. 

Hours and hours on the road and it seems like they’ve barely made it anywhere. 

Anya closes her eyes and has a horrific image of decomposing here in this stupid car. It’s her own fault they’re out here in it instead at some nice well meaning weirdo’s place. 

She slides sandals on and hugs her arms to her body and turns on a battery operated lantern they’d also purchased as she makes the trek, spotting Dmitry’s tent. 

“I can’t sleep,” she announces before she can tug the zipper all the way down, and he rolls over, looking sleep rumpled and, well, shirtless. 

Dmitry sits up in his sleeping bag, pushing his thick hair out of his face, “What happened to the car is the perfect place to sleep?”

Anya mumbles something so he can’t actually make out that she’s telling him to fuck off and turns to zip the tent back up. 

Dmitry holds a hand up to shield his eyes from the bright light of the lantern when she turns around, “Care to repeat that, your highness?”

She attempts to fight the flush that is crawling up her skin, “You’re not wearing a shirt.”

He leans over to take the lantern from her and sets it down, while decreasing the brightness. “Like what you see?”

Well, she certainly doesn’t want to. 

“Mostly I’m concerned about the bugs that will crawl all over your flesh,” she responds, taking a seat at the end of his sleeping bed.

“There’s only one pest bothering me right now,” he responds, overly sweet and swats at her to emphasize his point. 

“You’re not cute.”

“Hey,” Dmitry motions with his fingers, in a better mood than he had been all day. “My eyes are up here.”

She reaches over and pulls his pillow out to hit him with it. “The car is like an overheated coffin.”

“It’s hot and stuffy weather,” Dmitry agrees, there’s an underlying smugness to him even if he’s not pointing out that he’d been right. “So now you want to sleep with me?”

“In your tent,” she makes sure to clarify. “I don’t know where Vlad went, and I suppose sharing a tent with you is preferable to death by suffocation.”

Dmitry grabs the pillow she had smacked him with and tosses it over to her, “You always say the sweetest things to me.”

Anya groans as she stretches out on the tent and places her head against his pillow. It smells of lemongrass. “The feeling is mutual.”

He reaches over and grabs the shirt he had removed, and balls it up to put under his head. “Sweet dreams.”

Then he goes to turn off the lantern completely, but instinct has Anya’s hand reach out to grasp his upper arm. “Not all the way, please.”

He pauses and she’s afraid he’s going to ignore her request, or worse, ask questions. There’s nothing more humiliating than being eighteen and still afraid of the dark. Instead he slowly dima the lantern until she gives a nod. 

He looks different in the glow of the moonlight and the dim lamp and she forces her eyes to flutter shut, something in her unable to process what she’s feeling. 

She finds she can’t take the silence either. She’s entirely too aware of him stretched out beside her. 

“Dmitry?” 

“Anya?”

“Have you been camping like this a lot?”

“If you mean, across the country to reunite a lost heiress with her family then no,” Dmitry says, and she rolls her eyes in response. Sometimes he speaks as though he might actually believe the possibility of her being Anastasia. “I’ve slept on the streets a lot, too. But it’s not the same as this.” Then, softly, “My dad used to take me camping at sites like this when he was still alive.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah,” Dmitry says. “He was obsessed with the stars. We barely had enough money for rent, but he’d collect telescope parts and build his own out of them.”

Her heart gives a tug at that, as though expanding to collect all the stars in the sky. 

“Does his son put together telescopes to see the stars too?”

“No,” Dmitry lets out a small laugh that doesn’t quite sound bitter. “His son has always been firmly on the ground.”

“I don’t know,” Anya yawns, sleep finally creeping up on her. “I think you have a bit of a dreamer in you, too.”

She can feel him staring at her for several beats before asking, “How so?”

“Some of these notions of me that you have are just wild,” she teases, her eyes fluttering shut finally. Maybe she’ll dream herself into being a lost heiress.


	6. chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please excuse dimya whilst they fall in love

Dmitry and Anya form a sort of truce after that night, a tentative version of friendship. Or what she perceives friendship to be, Anya’s never really made friends before. Her family didn’t take to it well, and she never really figured out how to make meaningful connections to others. Especially not when being shuffled between foster homes and school districts. 

The morning in the tent she awoke for the first time without being in a state of or near state of panic. It’s just the calm of the outdoors and warmth of the sun and she can’t remember the last time she had such a peaceful wake up. 

It takes her a moment to register Dmitry’s presence and she expects to tense and doesn’t. She rolls over to find him still asleep on his side, his arm stretched out under his head, his mouth slightly open and his breathing even. He’s softer and younger in sleep and she wonders what she looks like in sleep or if the stress and panic she normally feels when she sleeps is echoed on her face. 

Anya sits up and shuts off the lamp, the sun preventing any darkness from covering. She’s not certain if it’s the clicking noise of the lamp or the motion of her sitting up or if it’s just time, but Dmitry awakes, blinking and their eyes catch. 

Dmitry lets out a deep breath, and sits up, reaching over and tugging gently on the end of her braid. The softness from sleep hasn’t completely left him and she’s fascinated. “Should probably find Vlad and get on the road.” 

Anya rubs at her eyes as he unzips the tent flap and steps out, extending his hand up to help her. “You know where he is?” 

They’re palm to palm and it’s gentle pressure to get her to follow him, “No, but figure if we find whoever’s already made breakfast and we’ll find him.” 

“How did you guys meet?” They’re a mismatched pair. Vlad, the older man with faded opulence and Dmitry the earth bound teenager. 

His hand releases hers and he guides her with a hand on the small of her back. She doesn’t recall being so aware of his movements before. 

“Just sort of fell in together,” he brushes the question off. 

Still, Anya smiles as they make their way across the campground. “You mean to say he’s not secretly some lost prince you’re trying to get back to his country?”

“No,” he says slowly, “But Vlad will probably try to convince you otherwise if you asked him.” 

She laughs and he looks almost startled by the noise. As promised, they find Vlad by food, and they get invited for breakfast. After they eat, Dmitry announces it’s Anya’s turn to drive. 

So much for their unspoken truce. 

-

Despite her misgivings, something had clicked that night in the tent and Dmitry can teach or she’s better at learning and her apprehension over driving dissolves away like their previous animosity. She’s never been in so much control over her own life, she’s ready to lay down in Arkansas and stay. And she would, were it not for the continuing pull New York has over her. 

Sometimes Anya’s afraid that her desire to go to New York is just ingrained in her from the media she’s consumed. The books she’s read and the movies she’s seen and there’s nothing out there but a false promise. But here out on the road with Dmitry and Vlad it certainly feels like something. 

Dmitry takes back the driving duties before they get back on the highway, and they stop at a gas station with a shower to rinse up. She buys a collection of junk food Dmitry teases her for and they’re traveling almost every moment of the day and yet she can feel the roots growing under her. 

They find another campground to set up camp out when dusk hits, the three of them exhausted and full of road dust. 

Vlad sets up his own tent this time, and Anya crawls into Dmitry’s without a word, and the lamp is already dim for her. 

“Mitya?” She asks, the nickname falling from her lips without permission. 

He’s on his back and she can see the whites of his eyes when he opens them to look at her. “Anya?” 

“Tell me a story,” she asks of him. She hates sleeping, the way the darkness creeps over her even with a night light on. Hates the claustrophobic feeling that covers her chest when she tries to wake up. 

“You should get some rest,” is Dmitry’s response. 

“I don’t know how,” she confesses, the memory of him and his softness in sleep apparently making her feel comfortable to do so. “I think I’m afraid of my own dreams.”

“Have you always had nightmares?” 

It feels dramatic to call them nightmares. They’re sensations and shadows, nothing like a killer with a knife chasing her or showing up in public naked. Her dreams aren’t tangible enough to give a name to. 

“I guess,” she says, they are a more constant companion than anything else in her life. She can’t remember a time before they visited her in her sleep. “Whatever I can remember of my childhood, it wasn’t a happy one.” 

She’s never thought of all the holes in her memory before, always so focused on the future. Of not wanting to remember what had come before where she currently was. It used to seem like a choice, this not remembering. Now she’s not sure. 

Now she seems to borrow another’s memories like she borrows clothes from strangers. 

“What do you think your childhood was life if you were, are, Anastasia?” Dmitry asks her. 

A warmth crawls under her skin as though she can feel the sun on her skin. 

“Full,” is the first word that comes to mind. “I mean with all the sisters and little brother and parents and Nonna and the aunts. Large backyard, endless hallways.”

There’s an image of what it would be like in the back of her brain that won’t quite form. 

“Ah yes,” Dmitry says, only a slight bitter edge to his voice as he speaks. “All the things riches can buy.” 

“It’s more than that,” Anya says, staring up at the top of the tent, barely making out the stars above it. “It’s riches in love, too.”

Anya has no memory of either. Dmitry’s quiet because she knows from the other night he had riches in love for the first part of his life and he can carry that with him through the rest of his days. 

It’s quiet in the tent but it’s not an empty silence. She has a distant memory of the smell of oranges and if she closes her eyes she can be transported to a lake. She just can’t imagine anything with clarity. 

“I don’t go by Mitya, by the way,” he says long after she thinks he’s fallen asleep. “My father used to call me Dima, but everyone calls me Dmitry these days.” 

“Even Vlad?”

“Yeah,” and he pauses to yawn. “Even Vlad.” 

For some reason that’s one of the loneliest things she’s ever heard. 

Her eyes flutter shut and she drifts into a formless sleep. She awakens with the sun, once again softly and without panic, like her psyche knows the open sky is there to protect her. She’s turned on her side at some point in her sleep, and she can feel Dmitry’s hand rest on her hip. Anya’s just not sure if it’s there to pull her closer or hold her from him at a distance. 

She expects to feel something- panic, annoyance, revulsion but instead it’s just a comfortable weight on her hip. 

Anya rolls to face towards him and he appears very much like he did the previous morning. His hair has fallen against his close eyes, his mouth slightly open. His hand moves to her lower back, and she feels the pull to bring herself closer to him. Curl her hand around his arm, and rest her face against his shoulder. 

She’s never craved the comfort of touch so much. 

Dmitry pulls his hand away, awake now, his hand in his hair pushing it away. The season’s switched to fall, and creeping out of the south west, the seasons became more definitive. The air is crisp and cool in the mornings. 

“Another day, another state,” he announces, not looking at her. 

America seems long and endless, but suddenly feels not long enough. 

They’ll be in New York before she knows it, probably, and she wants to throw up from the thought of it.


	7. chapter six

The car breaks down just outside of Illinois. They’d been in Missouri for a few weeks, working some odd jobs and living out of a campsite and off the kindness of strangers. They develop a routine, the three of them. It’s more her and Dmitry, however. Vlad is always off odds and ends, never fully committing to doing something traditional. 

She gets a job waiting tables, and brings back leftovers. She has to go to a coin machine every few days because her tips are mostly loose change and it’s too heavy for her to carry across the country with. She’s never had a bank account, too paranoid to put her information down after the way her parents had raised her. She doesn’t even remember what last name they had, they had issued her a new one at the orphanage. 

Dmitry drops her off at work and works at a bar around the corner. She goes in after her shift and sits at the corner of the bar and sips Shirley Temples until he gets off. He watches over her all night, even if he pretends like he’s not. 

He works on the car, exchanging favors to try to get it up and running again. He works on other cars in exchange for having the tools and spot for him to work on his. Anya sits on a chair nearby, reading outdated magazines from the waiting room as he works on it and the other mechanics just shake their heads sadly and tell him he’s fighting a lost cause, and any fixes he does make to it won’t get him very far. 

One afternoon, she tugs on the sleeve to a flannel shirt she’s borrowed from one of her old jobs, pulling it over her fingers and walks over to him once he’s alone. Dmitry is very rarely alone out in public, he knows how to connect to people- how to network- how to exchange goods and services without ever losing a dime. 

“We can go back to the helpers,” Anya tells him. “If we need to, I think it’ll be okay to.” 

After all, the original plan was to get across the country using her as a slight possibility of being Anastasia. It seems a waste to not utilize it. 

“We don’t need to,” Dmitry insists, not coming out from the hood of the car. “Not yet, anyway.” 

Another one of the mechanics walks over and she instinctively steps a few steps off of the side to get as blocked by Dmitry as she can. 

There’s no reason for her to be like this, really, she just is. 

Dmitry stands up, finally, and moves, blocking her further. 

“Awfully protective of your girl there, aren’t you?” The guy asks. 

“She’s not m—-“ Dmitry is cut off by Anya pinching his back. “She’s shy.” 

She curls her hand in the back of Dmitry’s shirt. It feels like a betrayal to herself to cower behind him, but she’s had to be brave so many times throughout her life, she’s exhausted and needs a rest. 

The guy says something low but she’s actively not listening but she hears Dmitry tell him to leave them be and she can feel the tension in the room but then footsteps walking away. 

“We’re done for the day,” Dmitry announces as he turns around and trips a little when her arms are thrown around him. There’s a delay before his arms come around her, giving her a brief squeeze. “If you’re going to be my girlfriend, I should probably feed you.” 

Anya pokes him in the side. “I’ll take the food but not the role.” 

“I don’t know,” he says, an arm wrapped loosely around her waist as he guides her back outside and towards the center of town. “You were pretty quick to embrace that label.” 

“Men like that will only listen to other men,” she tells him. “And you’re the lesser of two evils.” 

Dmitry grins at her, and her throat closes up. “Why, Anya, that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

Anya shoves at him but he doesn’t let her go. 

Several nights later, they’re at the bar a little bit past closing. It’s a Sunday so last call is at 12:30am, making it an earlier night than most. There was this one girl who lingered, milking out her drink, looking at Dmitry under lashes, slipping a piece of paper to him and taking approximately two hours to walk through the door. 

Typically she’d make a joke about not seeing his appeal but her tongue feels heavy tonight. 

He takes the money on the counter and throws away the paper without looking at it. She wonders how many offers he gets a shift. 

Anya wants to encourage him to take the opportunity for a warm bed where he can but the words don’t form in her mouth. It’s pointless, anyway, he wouldn’t let her make her way back to the campsite on her own. 

They finally leave when it’s nearly 2am and find themselves on the sharp edge of a knife and a hand on the strap of Dmitry’s messenger bag. 

Dmitry moves slowly to open his bag, his entire body in front of her again. All she thinks about is their entire lives are basically in that bag. At least their livelihoods are on them and they can’t afford to lose anything else. The other thing is that the guy doesn’t expect a petite teenage girl to tackle him, and he doesn’t and it startles the knife out of his hand and he takes a swing, which Dmitry ducks, grabs her, his feet clumsily kicking the knife away, and they run. 

They run long after they can’t see or hear anyone anymore, and then they duck into an alcove to catch their breath. 

“You’re fucking insane,” Dmitry huffs out, peeking out again at the empty street. “What were you thinking, Anya?” 

His hands come to press against her cheeks and he looks a bit like he could strangle her but she doesn’t remember how to be afraid around him. 

“We don’t have anything,” she reminds him. “We can’t lose anything.” 

“Can’t lose you,” he says, and it might be the first time anyone’s ever felt that way about her. No matter the motive behind it. “We can always make money, you can’t…”

“We’re okay,” she points out, though her voice shakes when she says it and her lower lip trembles. 

Dmitry lets go of her, leaning back against the wall. “I’d give it a little while longer to make sure he’s not around.”

Anya just nods in response. 

“This isn’t the first time someone’s attempted to mug me,” Dmitry speaks up, after a few moments of silence. A sound of a single car driving down the road. “First time a girl’s tackled someone to prevent it from happening though.” 

Anya lets out a soft laugh, “I feel like most girls would take the opportunity to do so.” 

“Nah, that’s all shallow stuff,” he brushes it off. Then, “I ran away when my father died.” 

She blinks, her attention fully on him now. Her heart hasn’t stopped beating fast from the experience. “Where was your mother?” 

“She died long before him,” he admits, and looks away from her. “Don’t really remember her.” Dmitry clears his throat, clearly not wanting to linger on the topic of his mother. “Didn’t want to go in the system, thought I could raise myself.” 

“And could you?” Anya asks him, knows she’s run away enough times on her own. 

Dmitry stands straight, proud. “Of course.” 

They share a smile. 

“Better at it now that I’m older”, he admits, looking a bit sheepish. “Got caught a lot when I was young.” 

So did she. She thinks of the journey to New York, the kindred spirit she’s supposed to meet and has a moment of wondering if all roads didn’t lead here instead. 

“So we both don’t have any family,” she says, more processing than meaning to say it out loud. 

“You don’t know that,” he says softly before the bravado returns. “The answer is in New York.”

Anya’s not certain of that. She’s not certain of anything. 

They stare at each other for a moment, she fights the urge to sway towards him and close her eyes. It’s adrenaline and nothing else. 

“Close your eyes,” Dmitry tells her, and she worries he can read her mind. 

Anya takes a step back, a shake of her head.

“I’ve got your back,” he says. “Just close them.”

Anya closes her eyes. 

She feels a cold and slightly heavy weight placed in her hand. Curious, she opens her eyes to see a beautiful, but somewhat beat up music box. 

“It’s beautiful,” she says, lifting it up to look at the bottom of it. The words on the bottom were dirty and faded. 

“It’s broken,” Dmitry sounds sheepish about it. He’s able to fix so many things, bring them back to life. She’s not certain why he’s not able to fix this. “I haven’t really had a chance to fix it, but it kind of felt wrong to. They think it belonged to Anastasia.”

Anya gasps, holding it up towards the direction of the streetlight, their assaulter now forgotten. She goes by instinct rather than rational thought, and fingers wind the bottom and flick the clasp and the music comes to life. Playing a familiar melody, she can’t name what it is but knows she’s heard it before. 

Dmitry steps forward and then back, his mouth forming a question but his eyes looking at her like she looks at him everytime he brings a broken machine back to life. 

Kindred spirits, indeed.


	8. chapter 7

“You keep humming that,” Vlad comments from his place in the backseat. The car is fixed and they’re heading east again. “I’ve never heard it before.” 

“It’s some lullaby in a music box Dmitry ga- has,” Anya says. It’s her first time driving on the highway, and Dmitry has stopped paying attention when she drives. He looks over at that. 

“The Anastasia Music box?” Vlad asks, “Thought that was broken.”

“It’s not a lullaby,” Dmitry tells her. “I told you, it was made for Anastasia. All of it was custom including the song.” 

“No,” Anya argues. “I’ve heard that song before.”

Dmitry and Vlad exchange a look and Vlad is the one to speak, and he does so softly. “Maybe you’ve just heard something similar to it before.” 

“No,” she’s not certain why she’s so adamant about it. Maybe they have the wrong music box or it’s an imposter, but she knows that song. “Dancing bears, painted wings?” They both look at her with blank expressions. “Do you not remember this song?”

It’s so clear in her mind, she knows this song. She remembers this song somewhere in the corners of her mind. Smooth hands over her smaller ones, the smell of orange blossoms in the air and an older woman with blue eyes.

A grandmother? Maybe that’s why she doesn’t remember so much about her parents because she has been left to be raised by a grandmother for a few years. It would make sense with their inconsistent parenting. 

“No,” Dmitry says, his hand steadying hers. “But I believe that you remember it.” 

She wants to tug her hand away from his from the vague condescending tone to it but she also understands he’s meant to be reassuring. Instead she turns her hand palm up and leaves it there. 

He doesn’t pull away either

-

“What are you afraid of?” Anya feels bold enough to ask one night when they’re sharing the bathroom for sleep. Vlad insists on taking the twin size bed, saying with his back he needs it. 

She’s in a bathtub full of pillows and blankets and it’s not even the most ridiculous sleeping arrangement she’s ever had. She thinks she holds a memory of her parents shutting her in trunks on car rides to sleep at night. 

Dmitry is stretched out on the floor below the tub, one pillow under his head and a robe as a blanket. 

She’s pretty certain he’s not afraid of anything, but she asks anyway. 

“Thunderstorms,” he says after a long quiet moment. There’s a storm happening out there, along the border of Ohio. 

“Storms?” She asks, peaking over the edge of the tub. “Bad experience or just noise sensitive?”

“No clue,” he says, an attempt to shrug it off. “Made me wet the bed until I was six though.” 

“Good thing we’re in a bathroom,” she points out, not wanting to break this air of vulnerability between them. He chuckles lightly. “Are you ok with this now?” 

“Yeah, it’s fine,” he responds, and she feels like he’d tell her that no matter what. And he must sense she won’t let that go because he says. “Distractions help.” 

“Distractions?” Anya muses out loud, twisting an antique ring they’d found back in Missouri at a pawn shop. They’d thrown it in with other things Dmitry was trading for when they saw her interest in it. “I don’t know what story to tell, mine feel bleak.” 

“Tell me what you know about Anastasia,” he tries and she wrinkles her nose at the reminder of what’s awaiting them in New York. “Who was her best friend?” 

Anya sighs, she doesn’t even know much. Just what she’d absorbed through the news and pop culture over the years. “Her little brother, Alexei.” 

“Wrong,” Dmitry’s hand comes up to tap the side of the bathtub. “Her best friend was—“

“I’m not wrong,” Anya argues and she sees Dmitry lift his head. “Alexei was her best friend.” 

Their eyes lock for a prolonged moment, both of them refusing to blink. Then something shifts in Dmitry. 

“Tell me about Alexei,” he says, laying his head back down. 

Blue eyes and messy dark blond hair come to mind. Unsturdy legs, always seeming to run to try to catch up with his siblings. 

“He was sick,” she says, the thought forming in her mouth a second before she thought it. 

Dmitry sits up, his elbows resting on the edge of the tub. He’s looking at her so intensely but not in the way she feels pulled to. “With what?” 

“Some blood disease,” Anya says. Why does she know this? It must have something to do with why her parents didn’t pick it up so it would’ve played heavily in the news cycle. “He bruises easily and never stops bleeding.” 

“Hemophilia,” Dmitry gives it a name. “Did Vlad tell you about that?” 

She frowns, “No, why?” 

“No one knows about that”, he says. “Vlad has this ex who was close to the family so found out but, it’s something they keep out of the public knowledge.” 

Anya sighs, “I think you’re both fucking with me trying to make me think I have Anastasia’s memories.” 

“Maybe,” but he smirks when he says it before looking serious again. “You ever think you might be someone different than you were raised to believe?” 

“You mean like a lost heiress instead of an abandoned child?” Anya asks and he shakes his head. 

“Like, at the core,” he says, his face twisting as he tries to think of the words he’s saying. “Not at all the person you thought you were.” 

Anya’s heart jumps in her throat and she slides back down in the bathtub of pillows. “Yes.” 

It’s quiet now, no storm. Just the sound of Vlad’s muffled snoring on the other side of the bed. 

It’s a mutual decision to fall asleep then.

-

It’s another night and another tiny motel room and Anya feels trapped after another day traveling an endless road, this time crossing into Pennsylvania, heading into Western New York and wants nothing to do with doors or walls, no matter how chilly the night air has gotten. 

“Let’s go camping,” she demands of Dmitry as Vlad gets ready for bed in the room they’re supposed to sleep in and he’s gathering the extra blankets and pillows for them. 

“We just got a hotel room,” he points out. 

“Vlad got a hotel room,” she counters and wins the point. 

They head out in the open fields, and she’s not certain if it is actually legal for them to camp there. It’s best to not peer too closely into those matters when traveling with Dmitry. They set up the tent, but they stretch out along the grass, their hands a whisper away from touching. Her heart is beating so fast in that field next to him, she was fairly certain she was about to have some sort of attack. Be it heart or anxiety.

The stars are out in full view, and when she breathes in the entire night sky fills her lungs. 

“You should build me a telescope,” Anya tells him, rolling on her side to face him. She doesn’t know when she had grown accustomed to asking people for things. Or him. Just him.

“I don’t know how,” he says, and she recognizes the lie that it is. 

She’s not certain if she believes there’s anything in the world he can’t fix. 

“You take the most ugly, broken down shit,” she tells him. “And you can see the history and beauty inside of it, and bring that back out. You’re telling me you don’t know how to create a telescope?”

She thinks of the night before, and how close he had her to believing that she could possibly be Anastasia Romanov. 

“It’s not the same thing.”

She wonders what it is like to be raised by such a great shadow of a man that you were afraid to touch a single part of what had made him.

“You don’t even need a telescope tonight,” Dmitry tells her, pointing at the sky. “Everything’s right in plain view.”

“Do you know the constellations?”

“Yes,” he says, and he rolls on his side to face her as well. “But they’re the least interesting thing about the sky.”

“How so?”

“Constellations are like celebrities, the entire world thinks they’re fascinating and much more than they actually are,” Dmitry explains, his eyes more green than normal, as though reflecting the glass under them. “Individual stars that are just ordinary, regular stars are the ones that matter.”

“I think they’re all wonderful,” Anya declares, rolling onto her back to look at the stars again. Dmitry is still looking at her. “Do you think the stars are just as hard to see as they say in New York City?”

“Probably,” he answers. “There’s a lot to get in their way.”

Anya glances back over at him, and they stare at each other for a beat or two. She would give anything to be kissed right now and the thought doesn’t surprise her as much as she feels it should. She wants to be kissed in the field in the middle of nowhere under the stars by this boy, she can feel the pull of his phantom lips on hers. However, as soon as her eyes flutter shut, Dmitry pulls away. Sitting up, he reaches into his messenger bag as though he had something to actually look for. Eventually he pulls out an apple, for something to do or to keep her at a distance, and begins to eat that.

The disappointment steadies her heart.


	9. chapter 8

It’s one of the nicer hotels that they’ve stayed at, though it’s mostly unoccupied. Anya can’t tell if Vlad or Dmitry got them a good deal because the hotel needed the occupancy or if Vlad was a bit more fast and loose with their money now that they were closer to New York. (A heartbeat away, really.)

As a result, they each have their own room and Anya doesn’t think she’s ever had a room of her own before. When she was still with her parents, she’d share a room with her Aunt. Then at the group and foster homes, no one got a room to their own. After that, the shelter was definitely not a place of one’s own. After sharing a space with Dmitry for so much of the trip, she’s a bit unnerved by the emptiness of it all. Her nightmares have crept back into her brain. Always abstract, but the forms were there, as though waiting for her to name them. 

She wakes up crying in an empty room. 

She wonders if any of them feel ready or prepared to arrive, because now it feels like nitpicking and dawdling. (She’s not exactly complaining.) 

There’s an empty conference room, and Vlad declares that Anastasia would know how to waltz. 

“Anastasia was kidnapped when she was seven years old,” Anya points out. “I don’t know if waltzing was high on the priority list, even for folks as rich as the Romanovs.”

Dmitry smirks at that but doesn’t make an argument himself to Vlad, and instead pulls Anya into his arms and her own argument dies on her tongue.

They’re both awkward at it at first, unsure of how to move- how to lead, how to follow, Anya’s not sure where to look. Every single cell of her is aware of his hand tight against her waist, his palm pressed flush against hers, the way the muscles in his shoulder move underneath her other hand. 

Every movement is a held breath that she doesn’t want to let go. 

Dmitry stumbles, and she lightly kicks him in the shin in return, grinning a little too proudly. He just shakes his head in response. 

“Now now children,” Vlad warns them, “Stay focused!” 

Dmitry and Anya’s eyes meet and she has to force her eyes to stay open, fighting against the urge to have them flutter shut, feeling pulled in again by him like she had the night at the field. 

There’s something magical about dancing barefoot in an empty room with Dmitry. 

His hand slides from her hand to her waist and she feels herself being lifted in the air. She lets out a delighted squeal and her hands wrap around her neck instinctively.

It’s a rush, and she wants to say she’s never been held feeling so safe and warm before but there’s a crack in her memory and the emotion of being held comfortingly before seeps in. 

Her parents were not her parents. She remembers every emotion she ever felt with them and her Aunt and none of them resembled that. 

She might not be Anastasia, still doubts it greatly but she definitely is somebody and that’s more than she’s ever felt before. 

“You okay?” Dmitry asks her, low in a voice just for her to hear, her feet still hovering just above the ground. 

“Yeah,” she answers, “Never better.”

-

Vlad gives up on them after an hour, or rather, gives himself a break to go get them food. The closer they get to New York the higher his spirits get. The more steady Dmitry gets. And the more in turmoil she gets. It’s a moment she’s been waiting her entire life for, but she’s questioning things she’s never thought to question before and she doesn’t want this in between time to end. 

She’s stretched out on the floor, her back against the wall in a posture that Vlad will definitely lecture her for when he returns. Dmitry’s next to her, fiddling with an old pocket watch. 

“You would think Vlad’s a Romanov,” Anya says, to fill the silence. “Given how excited he is to see them.” 

Dmitry snorts, glancing over at her, “He wishes. He’s just excited to see Lily.” 

“Who’s Lily?” 

Anya wonders if she annoys him still, with all of her questions. But he answers them all with patience. 

“A cousin of the Romanovs,” he explains. “She’s the one that does most of the press for them now whenever they think there might be news in the Anastasia case.” 

The red headed woman. Right. She had a vague memory of her in the news. “Do they have a history?” 

“Oh, do they ever,” Dmitry sets the watch on the floor, turning his full attention on to her. Warmth crawls along her skin. “Not one with a happy ending, and so he’s looking to remedy that.” 

“I see,” Anya responds. She loves learning pieces of both men’s history. “This entire thing is so he can impress her by making her think he’s found Anastasia.” 

“It’s probably a factor,” Dmitry agrees, always so careful with his words around her. “Not the entire thing.”

She frowns, knowing the implication in that. They had ended the dance lesson earlier, Anya giving what she thought was a curtsy but had Vlad looking at her strangely. 

“That was a perfect révérence,” he had said, explaining it was a curtsy ballet dancers did. 

“Perhaps I took lessons as a child after all,” she allowed. 

“Does he really think I could be Anastasia?” She asks. 

“I don’t think either of us know what to make of you,” he responds, lightly tapping her on the leg. “I think you’re more than you think, and isn’t it worth finding out?” 

Anya doesn’t know what it’s like to make herself vulnerable. She’s been put in vulnerable positions, and he drew it out of her and she’s not certain how, but she’s never purposefully put herself out there like that before. 

She clears her throat, “Tell me more and Lily and Vlad.” 

“Vlad tells the story better,” he says. “But he’s been pining after her for a decade at least.” 

“He must love her very much,” her throat catches on the word love. 

“He certainly thinks so,” Dmitry allows, ever pragmatic except for when it comes to her. “My father was a similar sort.” 

Anya tucks her legs to the side, turning her body so she’s giving Dmitry her attention. It’s weirdly intimate here in this large empty conference room. 

“What sort is that?” 

“The sort that loves someone so deeply long after they’re gone,” he says, averting her gaze. “Don’t think there was ever anyone else for my father after my mother passed.” 

She wonders what it’s like to inspire that sort of love in another, but it mostly seems sad to her. She wants to believe in the ability to recover after loss.

“Do you remember her at all?”

He showed her a photo of his father once, sandy blond hair and dark blue eyes. She can imagine his mother though, for he must favor her. Dark brown hair and brown eyes and pieces of gold and green hidden away in them. 

“Not really,” he admits, picking the pocket watch back up. “Mostly I remember my father bringing me to the cemetery with flowers every year on her birthday. March 28th. I remember the date, but it’s been so long I don’t remember where she’s buried.” 

Anya reaches over and takes hand in hers and tries not to think about it too much as she does so. “What was her name?” 

“Valerie,” he says, and doesn’t pull his hand away. “Valerie Sudayev.”

She tucks that information away in her brain, the part that’s become a collection of facts and memories about Dmitry. 

“I don’t think I knew what my parents' names were,” Anya tells him, her thumb rubs circles against his wrist. His veins jumping with each pulse. Not even her Aunt, who she just called Tetya. “But I don’t think they were my parents.” 

Dmitry pulls his hand away, standing up. His hands wipe down on his green sweater. 

“They’ll probably need this room soon,” he announces, and pulls her up quickly, disconnecting their contact as quickly as it had been initiated. “Should probably make sure Vlad isn’t keeping the food for himself.” 

Numbly, she nods. 

New York might be just a heartbeat away, but suddenly she feels rooted to this spot.


	10. chapter 9

Dmitry sells the car just outside of Rome, NY and buys them three train tickets to Penn Station in New York. He points out that they won’t need a car in New York and this allows them some but of luxury and rest.

Anya misses learning to drive and taking control of her own life. Vlad has gifted her a tablet and she doesn’t ask any questions about where he’s gotten it from. There’s some movies already loaded on it and she selects one to watch. 

The seats are two a spot, so she ends up next to Dmitry and Vlad’s somewhere further down the aisle, saying he’s going to enjoy some time to himself after all this traveling together. Dmitry puts earbuds in his ear and tips his head back. 

She tries to watch the movie and not him but it’s difficult to keep her eyes on the screen. Eventually her eyes flutter shut, and she awakens to the sound of muffled speaking overhead. 

Anya’s hand is wrapped around Dmitry’s arm and one of her headphones have fallen out of her ear, and she has no idea where she is in the movie. 

Her fingers move on his arm, and she lifts her head up, wiping the sleep from her eyes.

Dmitry pulls his earbuds from his ears, she pulls her remaining one from her ear.

“Where are we?” She asks, attempting to stretch.

Dmitry thinks about it, “Just past Rhinecliff.”

“Oh,” she says, unsure how to respond to that. “We are almost there, I guess.”

“Closer than we have been before,” Dmitry says, his voice catching on the words. 

Anya twists in her seat slightly, so she is facing him more. A thought occurring to her. “What if they don’t even want to see me?”

She’s tried not to think too much about the whole end aspect of this. Of meeting the Romanovs, of humoring this idea she could have been one of them. She’s told herself to keep moving forward if she’s not one of them, she’s still someone. 

“It’s a possibility,” he says slowly. “But we haven’t come all this way to start having doubts now.”

“I wish I had your confidence,” she says, her forehead dropping to rest on his bicep. “What if we’ve come all this way for nothing, and I’m still Anya Nobody?”

“Hey,” he says, pulling back, to slide his finger underneath her chin so she is looking up at him. “You’ve always got me.”

She thinks it might be the first promise he’s ever made her. 

Her mouth breaks out into a smile, and she relaxes against him, her head back on his shoulder. He loops an arm around her back. 

Fitted as though they were made for each other. 

“Two orphans with nothing else in the world,” she says, her voice a little dreamy and she can’t help it. 

“You don’t know that,” Dmitry replies, speaking quickly. “the answer awaits in New York City.”

Anya sighs and her eyes flutter shut again, “You’ve always got me too, Dmitry.”

Some promises couldn’t help but sound like vows.

-

Arriving in New York City is an overwhelming explosion of emotions that mostly leave Anya feeling tired. She grips Dmitry’s hand tight as they maneuver around Times Square, taking in sights that only before had been on screens and photographs. She can’t tell if the familiar feeling she feels is that she’s been here before or she’s just seen it so many times she feels like she has. 

They check into a hotel, the nicest one yet- Vlad is feeling very optimistic and Anya figures she should enjoy whatever luxuries she can before she’s homeless in Manhattan. Separate rooms again, but she doesn’t let go of Dmitry’s hand until they’re at her door. He seems like there’s something he wants to say but he doesn’t say it, and she feels like she should tilt her head back and brush her lips against his but she doesn’t find herself bold enough to do it. 

She forgets to think before she falls asleep. And the nightmares creep up on her without warning. Typically they’re abstract, as though taken from some sort of surreal place where nothing quite fit and nothing made sense. It splits her head open with pain, fills her lungs with an anxious panic and her mind becomes overwhelmed by near memories. She’d awaken, upset and confused but never being able to fully explain what had upset and confused her.

However, tonight, New York City below her, the nightmares seem more coherent. Not fully. But she could feel a hand on her mouth, the sense of being pulled away, a cold basement. A sense of…something she couldn’t quite place. These are memories she knows well from her childhood. But beyond there, as though her memories were rooms, there’s a heavy door with a golden light beyond that and she knows absolutely those are her missing years but the door is covered by snakes and spiders and it stings when she reaches out for it. 

She wakes up screaming. Something that hadn’t happened in so long when she had a nightmare. 

Hands are on her shoulder, settling her. Comforting her. The words aren’t harsh but soft and soothing.

“Anya, Anya, you’re in a hotel in New York,” the voice says. Hands smoothing over her hair. Her hands reach out and touch muscle. Unfamiliar but familiar. “You’re not wherever your mind just took you.”

She breathes. One. Two. Three. New York City. Hotel. Dmitry.

“I’m sorry I woke you,” she says, finally, once her breathing had slowed down to a more reasonable rate.

Dmitry lets out a sharp, but brief, laugh. “I wasn’t sleeping.”

She wonders if he had cause to feel as anxious as she did. Being here, now, after all this time doesn’t feel quite real. Part of her wants to turn around and run. She had gotten too close to a dream and she can’t handle the emotions that came with it.

He gets up, stepping out of her grasp, but she gets up on her knees, reaching out and pulling him back close. “In that case, stay with me? Just for a little while, even. I’m…”

She doesn’t know quite how to verbalize what she is feeling. She had been frightened but with him here now created a calming presence.

He stares at where her hand was on his arm. And swallows. And nods. “Sure.”

Anya scoots over on the bed, patting the spot next to her. He still hesitates, but he settles in, leaning against the headboard.

The bed is rather large. Still, there is no space between her and Dmitry. Her leg against his, his arm along her side. For the first time since she awoke, she notices his attire.

Or lack thereof.

She fights a blush, and hopes the dim light of the room masks it. “Do you ever wear a shirt to bed?”

“And deprive you of the view?” He teases, though there’s a tint of pink in the dark on his cheeks as well. 

“It must be so difficult to walk around so handsome,” she sighs, rolling her eyes. Anya places her cheek against his shoulder. “Do you really think I’m her?”

She closes her eyes, expecting a flippant response. An ‘of course I do’.

Instead, his answer is a soft, “I want to believe that you are.”

She tilts her head up, her eyes opening and noticing that his eyes an even darker shade in the shadow of the room. “Why?”

Why did he want her to be Anastasia? Why is she Anastasia? Why is she here?

“Because you deserve a good ending to your story,” he tells her in a matter of fact tone. “Or rather a beginning to a great story.”

Anya pulls back, shifting slightly so she is facing him rather than sitting side by side. “And you? What do you deserve?”

This time his laugh is dark and sarcastic, “Whatever’s coming to me.”

Anya frowns, because it sounds so sad and lonely and defeated. Nothing she associates Dmitry with now. Her hand reaches out, cupping his cheek, her thumb brushing over the dimple above his jaw.

He tries to pull away, but she holds steady. Backed by her youth, her own desire and the soul of this boy that was anchored to her. Another time, another place, another boy and she would take this as rejection. But she knew this isn’t what is going on.

She leans in and kisses him, giving into her earlier impulse, and he was a statue in return. Unmoving below her, except for the clenching of his hands against the bedsheet.

“Anya,” he says. “You shouldn’t…”

“I can do anything I want,” she says, defiantly, her chin tips up like a spoiled heiress’ would. The first time she feels as though she could be her. She kisses him again, and he stays unmoveable. She can feel the emotional distance he is putting between them. “Stay with me, please, Dmitry.”

His eyes meet hers, and she can see the moment he lost whatever war he had been fighting. When she kisses him once again, he moves under her lips, pulling her further and further in.

Anya had always felt the pull of New York City as though it would call her home but here, now, with Dmitry’s weight on hers she finally feels as though she’s finally come home.


	11. chapter 10

Anya awakes in a new life. The bed is softer than any she’s ever slept in, there’s the soft beginning of daylight in the window and Dmitry’s arm is locked around her. She was starting to think that maybe finding herself was not in her past but in her future. 

She feels him awake behind her, going to move his arm and let her go but she wraps her hands around it keeping it in place and Dmitry groans, dropping a kiss on her shoulder that goes straight to her toes. 

Anya turns in his embrace, and he flattens his hand against her back as she tilts her head up, he shifts to kiss her and she sighs. 

Dmitry’s smiling when he pulls away and it’s contagious, “Morning.” 

He rolls onto his back and she wraps her arm around his chest, making his shoulder her pillow. 

“Morning,” she mumbles against his skin, unwilling to fully wake up. 

She’s seen what’s outside this bed and it’s nothing she’s eager to get back to. 

“There’s a lot to do today,” he reminds her, gently pushing her hair away from her face. 

Anya tilts her head up to look at him, “What if we didn’t?” 

Dmitry gives a light laugh, “What if we didn’t do anything today?” 

“Yes,” she says, an idea springing to her mind, that has her sitting up. She wonders if she should feel modest or shamed but it’s natural, being in this state with Dmitry, his fingers brushing lightly against her arm. “What if we ran away?” 

“Think we already did that,” he tells her, rising up on his elbows. His hair is sleep rumpled and his eyes sleepy and he’s still the best thing Anya’s ever seen in her life. 

“We were trying to run towards something,” she corrects. And they had, just not to the end point she’d expected. “What if we gave up this idea that I’m Anastasia? We’ve made it to New York, which was always our goal- or at least mine. We’ve survived in numerous cities and towns across America, as well as our own childhood, what if we just...stopped here? Just made our own life?” 

“Lived off the land of New York City?” He says, his fingers working their way through her hand. 

“You and I- on the fly,” she says. “All we need.”

Dmitry bends down to kiss, “And what will we do for food?” 

Same thing they’ve always done, “We steal.” 

“Charming little life we’ve always led,” he comments. “But we can’t skip tonight.” 

“Because you want me to play Anastasia?” Anya pouts, turning her head when he goes to kiss her. 

“No,” he answers, and she looks at him again. “Because Vlad needs emotional support when he sees Lily again and it will crush him if he has to go alone.” 

“And then we can run away?” She asks him. 

Dmitry pulls a hand through his hair, “Not certain if it’s running away if we are staying in the same place.” 

“You’d stay with me?” 

“I’d go anywhere with you,” he promises her, and this time she does let him kiss her and it feels like home.

-

“We could live in Jersey,” Anya comments later, scrolling on the tablet Vlad gave her later. 

Dmitry has left briefly in the morning and come back with a variety of pastries from a place called Amy’s Bread and she’s breaking off pieces of the pain au chocolat while sitting cross legged on the bed. 

She’s stolen a sweatshirt from him, and paired with jeans she doesn’t remember what state or job she had taken them from but for once she only feels half borrowed. 

Dmitry glances over from where he’s sitting at the desk, long legs stretched out before him, studying a guide to New York. Vlad’s gone off to try to procure them all invitations to the event tonight. 

Her heart is in her throat just thinking about it even though she’s only going to support Vlad’s quest for love and not for the sliver of possibility of her being a Romanov. 

“You’d come all the way for New York and settle for New Jersey?” He asks her, incredulous. 

As long as she’s with him, she would. 

Anya nods. “May have to commute in the morning for bakeries, though, if there aren’t any as good as this over there.” 

That gets a smile and a shake of his head from him. “You shouldn’t fall in love with the first thing you like.” 

She frowns, but recovers, “I think there’s enough room in my heart for all the bakeries of the northeast.” 

Dmitry gets up and crosses the room, his hand slipping under her sweatshirt and brushing against her skin, now her heart is in her throat for an entirely different reason. “But is there enough room in your stomach for it?” 

Anya lets out a yelp as he tickles her sides and she pulls him on her. The rest of her breakfast may have gotten smushed in the process. She tilts her head up and he kisses her laughing mouth. 

“I’ll make room,” she declares, a bit breathless from laughing and the kiss. Her fingers trace along the line of his jaw. “Do we have to go tonight?” 

“Yes,” Dmitry turns his head to kiss her palm before standing up. “Looking forward to seeing how you clean up.” 

She sits up on her elbows, flushing slightly as she thinks of all the clothes she’s put together this trip the fanciest and best dress she owns is a polka dot sundress that’s a size too big for her and definitely nothing that would be acceptable at a party of the Romanovs ilk. 

“Is that what Vlad’s doing right now?” She asks, only half teasing. “Raiding some rich couple’s second home for outfits for us?” 

“Maybe me and him,” he answers, somewhat cryptically, heading towards the closet door. “But you’re already taken care of.” 

Anya slides off the bed, standing, crumbs falling from the sweatshirt of his that she’s wearing. “You already stole one for me?” Dmitry shakes his head. “Crafted one out of curtains yourself?” 

“Bought you one,” he says, and sends her reeling a little bit. He looks suddenly a bit bashful, and her hand reaches for his but he pulls it away to open the door. “With real money I earned at all those bars, I promise.” He’s avoiding her gaze, red creeping along his neck. “You’ve spent so much of this trip in borrowed clothes- thought you might want something that’s just your own tonight.” 

She wraps her arms around his back, cheek pressed against his shoulder blades, too overcome to wait for them to be in the right position for a proper hug. 

She doesn’t even need to see the dress, it’s been so long since she’s owned something that’s entirely her own that she can’t remember what the last item was, but she does open her eye and look around him to peek at it. 

Anya’s not sure what takes her breath away more- Dmitry or the dress. 

-

It’s easier to get into the party than Anya could’ve anticipated. Vlad came back properly groomed and well dressed and sent Dmitry to do the same- the well dressed part, Dmitry is always annoyingly properly groomed. Anya looked up hair tutorials and used the bobby pins Vlad brought back for her. She felt the pressure now to have everything else about her match the sparkling blue dress she now owns. 

Once they’re all well dressed and can pass as presentable it’s a matter of giving names at the door and they open for them as though the three of them had always belonged inside. 

It takes all of Anya’s willpower to not swish the skirts of the dress back and forth, just to watch them sparkle. She takes a glass of champagne and an hor d'oeuvre and tries not to mingle too much. 

She catches a glance of Vlad’s Lily at some point, a vibrant red head who appears to be his match in spirits at least. She’s surrounded by a dozen or so men, all of them equally enraptured by her presence. It’s not going to be an easy road for him. 

She bumps into a young boy, a handful of years younger than her. 

They both look startled by each other, but he recovers first, smoothing down his jacket.

“Sorry Miss,” he says politely. “Thought you were my sister.”

She’s nobody’s sister but she smiles at him, “No harm done.” 

The boy leaves but looks back at her, as though she’s a puzzle he’s trying to figure out. She can relate as she’s a puzzle she cannot figure out. 

She’s lost Dmitry at some point, he asked if she’d be okay on her own for a little bit and she rather thought so but she’s not used to crowds of strangers like this and she finds herself walking the edges, as though her feet know where she wants to go before she does. 

The door she steps in is the library, a wonderfully dark and homey room that smells of sandalwood and seems familiar. She’s spent a lot of time at the library, having nowhere else to go and not wanting to go back to her foster home so rooms of books are familiar to her. 

It’s a bit more than that because in her mind she can hear childish giggles and the sensation of her foot being pulled on and a voice that sounds like a younger version of hers declaring she won’t put down her book. 

She’s further distracted by that when she can hear a distant voice she registers as Dmitry’s. She walks towards it, finding a cracked open door and Dmitry talking to an older woman and she can’t make out what he’s saying but she hears the end very clearly. 

“-Anastasia.” 

Her heart drops straight to the bottom and probably through the floor. 

This entire Vlad and Lily thing was a ploy to get her here to pass her off as Anastasia after all.


	12. chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for taking so long to post this update- but as you can imagine it was a very difficult one to write!

Anya doesn’t know how she gets out, but she does. She feels like everyone is staring at her but they’re not, her heart is in her throat and beats a thousand times a second. She’s come so close but has never fallen apart before. Until now. 

Once out in the open air it’s a matter of borrowing someone’s town car and driver (it’s always borrowing with her, nothing truly ever hers)- the rich are always so happy to lend a hand to those they think are their own kind and never to those truly in need. She passes some sort of test tonight and she cracks a little more. 

She can breathe a little easier once she’s back in the hotel, tearing off the dress- the first one she’s truly ever owned but it’s all an illusion.

She can’t bring herself to pull on the same old clothes- nothing belonging to her so instead she pulls on the robe from the hotel. 

At least this is meant for her, in some strange sort of way. 

Dmitry comes in when she has her backpack out, angrily pushing in the various collection of items she’s obtained throughout this cursed trip. 

She has the music box in her hand, contemplating if she should leave it or take it but when she sees him her fingers curl around it and she contemplates hurling it at his head instead. 

Anya turns her back to him before he can say a word, because she’s not interested in hearing what he has to say. 

Dmitry’s proven he’s very good at persuasion and making you believe whatever he wants you to of him. 

She’s never been so fucking stupid in her life. 

“I trusted you, Dim-Dmitry,” she grinds out between gritted teeth. The music box is still curled in her hand because she can’t bring herself to let it go. Maybe she’ll bring it with her and she can get money for it at some pawn shop. Have something useful come from this entire mess and her time with him. “And It’s my life you played with- using my confusion and trauma for your own gain, filling in the cracks of my childhood with these stupid dreams of being someone more.” 

Anya bites her lip because Dmitry is just another person she doesn’t want to cry in front of. 

He’s quiet but she can still feel him there. Probably absorbing all her words and processing them so he can twist them back at her. 

She clears her throat to pass the crack she can feel forming in her voice. 

“I admired the way you were proud of who you were, despite where you came from,” Anya tries to keep her voice steady but isn’t certain how successful she is, her heart beating erratically and loud in her ears. “And you taught me to do the same. And let me hope for the future and we had plans and I sl-“

She finally gathers enough courage to turn around and it’s no longer Dmitry in the room with her but rather an elegant older woman with crystal blue eyes. 

Marie Romanov. 

“Forgive me, Ma’am those words weren’t addressed to you,” the words stumble out of her. 

Anya’s heart races and she doesn’t know what ever made her think she was strong enough to pull this off. Not that she’s going along with Dmitry’s ridiculous scheme, even if he ambushes her with Anastasia’s Nonna. 

No wonder he followed her here, he wanted to make sure she was still here for the Romanov matriarch. 

“I should hope not,” Marie says haughtily, her chin tilted up. “Your young man seems to think we may be connected.”

Anya can’t help the wince that comes with that phrase- your young man. No one belongs to Anya and she doesn’t belong to anyone. 

“He wants you to think so,” Anya says, the bitterness crept in her voice and she didn’t care. “I’m not a part of his scheme.” 

“That’s what he says,” she hasn’t left the doorway and Anya can’t imagine what’s brought her all the way to the hotel to meet some nobody con artist like her. “But still, he makes a convincing argument we should have a conversation.” 

Anya twists the belt of the robe with her fingers, her other hand still gripping the cursed music box. 

“He’s very persuasive,” Anya says, trying to convey indifference with a shrug. 

Marie’s eyes flicker over to the bed- made by housekeeping since that morning but Anya’s unfinished sentence hangs in the air and she flushes. 

“So he is,” Marie says. “He says you’re an orphan.”

“Not quite,” Anya answers, resigned to the conversation. Dmitry and a Romanov’s will is too great to resist and she’s just so tired. “My family dropped me off at an orphanage when I was ten.” 

“Who was your family?” Marie asks. 

Anya searches for her parents’ and aunt’s name but they’ve long left her memory. 

“I had parents and an Aunt,” Anya says, and sits down but Marie merely arches an eyebrow and she stands back up. “We moved a lot before then.” 

Marie nods, as though Anya’s childhood makes sense to her. At least it makes sense to one of them. 

“And the reason for your abandonment?” 

Anya winces, but then shrugs, “I think I was a nuisance to them and they were bored of me. They didn’t have much patience for me.” 

“For years now, they’ve created sketches of what my Anastasia should look like as an adult,” Marie jumps conversation topics, circling around her. “Every single one felt a bit off in one way or another, and every girl that’s stepped forward to claim being her has shared that likeness with those images.” 

Anya can’t help but ask, since she’s here. “And me?”

“You look nothing like them,” Marie says, and then gestures at Anya’s face. “Save the hair and the eyes. Those are easily altered.” 

Anya has a passing fear that she’ll reach out to see if Anya’s wearing colored contacts but she does not. 

She’s not certain what to say. 

But then Marie continues on, “But you do have Alix’s chin and cheekbones and Nicky’s nose and my forehead.” Anya makes a face at the suggestion she’s jigsaw pieces of other components and not herself. “And Anastasia’s facial expressions. That girl couldn’t hide an emotion, wearing a heart on her sleeve.”

It sounds similar but the whole not like other girls thing was a myth so she was bound to have at least one thing in common with the heiress. 

“Do you think I am her?”

“I don’t think anyone is her anymore,” Marie confesses, sitting down on the bench by the door, her posture slumps for a moment before her spine goes straight again. “But my heart refuses to listen.”

Anya gives a soft, sad smile at that, making a decision. “I believe this belongs to you.”

She’s marginally glad she did not choose to lob it at Dmitry’s head earlier.

She takes a seat next to Marie, hesitating but Marie responds with a nod. Anya sets the music box in her hand. 

Marie lets out a startled gasp, winding the bottom and undoing the latch just as Anya had done and she stares at awe as the opening chords of the lullaby play. 

She snaps it shut, taking a moment to compose herself before addressing Anya again. 

“I didn’t think I’d—“ she shakes her head. “Child, where did you get this music box?” 

Anya is honest in her answer, “Dmitry gave it to me.” Marie just nods in return. Unlike Anya and Anastasia, she is good at keeping her emotions veiled. “I don’t know if it’s hers or not, but if it is, I think you should have it.” 

“Of course it’s hers,” Marie snaps at her, then softens. “My apologies, it’s been so long since I’ve heard this song.”

“Me too,” Anya says, and Marie looks over at her curiously. “Dmitry and Vlad tried to convince me it’s not a known song but I’ve heard it before.”

“You couldn’t have,” Marie tells her. “They’re right- about that at least, it’s a lullaby I had commissioned for Anastasia. It was our little secret. So you can’t have heard it before.” 

Anya frowns, disappointed her twisted memory has let her down again. 

“I must be thinking of something else then,” Anya tells her, her own shoulders slumping now. 

She hums the opening chords again, trying to remember how the rest of the song goes. She hasn’t listened to it except the time she first listened to it. Something about it overwhelmed her and she hadn’t wanted to be pulled under like that. 

Marie is measuring her and judging her still, and Anya waits for the goodbye. She is leaving with more than she’s sure Marie expected to leave with- being reunited with her music box. 

Instead of leaving, she asks, “What is the song you know?” 

She starts at the part she’s gotten to humming, “Someone holds me safe and warm, horses prance through a silver storm, figures dancing gracefully across my…”

Anya stops when she realizes Marie is singing along with her. 

“That was Anastasia’s song,” Marie says softly, talking to herself. “You can’t have heard it.”

“I’m sorry,” Anya’s not certain what she’s apologizing for and her brain is still processing the fact that the song isn’t a well known lullaby. “I have a memory that I’m not sure is real.” 

Marie runs her thumb over the intricate design on the top of the music box. “What memory is that?” 

“I was at ballet- my parents and aunt didn’t have much interest in me doing anything, never even brought me to school so I don’t think they’d bring me to ballet,” Anya rattles off this memory or dream details. “I was waiting for my father- he had pinky-promised he would do it himself this time. We had plans- just the two of us for dinner before he brought me to my Nonna’s for the night and a town car pulled up and-“

She stops because that’s where her memory stops. Everything becomes hazy and shadowed. Formless. 

And she didn’t have a grandmother, her parents and aunt certainly couldn’t afford a town car or ballet lessons. 

Marie’s hand is on her shoulder, “And then what, dear?”

Anya turns her head and is overcome with the scent of Marie’s perfume. It’s a similar reaction to what she had with the hair dye, and it pulls her back to another time or place. 

“I do- orange blossoms,” words tumbling out of her mouth again. “Nonna always smelled of orange blossoms, I got in trouble because I used to sneak some from her collection and put too much on me and would be scolded for wasting them. It’s discontinued but my grandfather had bought out the rest of the supply when that happened so there was only so much left and I dropped one of them.”

She chokes out a sob because so much is coming back to her at once- ballet lessons, piano lessons, running around barefoot with her sisters in their backyard, hiding in dusty corners of the house and jumping out to scare her older sisters, the tightness of her father’s hugs, the way her mother’s strict face would sometimes be broken by the slight upward curve of her lips she’d fight against. 

The harshness of the strangers in the car, falling asleep after drinking the water they gave her; the miles and miles of memory being abused out of her where everything is still so muddled except for bits and pieces that have broken in. 

“Oh Anastasia,” Marie is crying too, and for once Anya doesn’t cringe at the name, the reality still hasn’t connected for her- the enormity of it all, but at the moment the name slips over her to feel so right. “Welcome home.”

Then she’s enveloped into a once familiar embrace.


	13. chapter 12

Everything moves fast after the DNA test. Anya- Anastasia’s- parents are brought in and it’s all so overwhelming. All this love thrown at her, to a person she only remembers an echo of being. She’s asked questions that she doesn’t remember the answers for. 

Her entire life is undone- twice in a short period of time- first by Dmitry and now by this- and remade in the span of hours. 

And when Anastasia Romanov comes home for the first time in eleven years, she doesn’t want to be there. Doesn’t want to keep stepping into places where she doesn’t feel like she belongs. Time, everyone tells her gently, she just needs time. She steps foot into a giant foyer, and her feet itch to run. She doesn’t remember this place. Everyone speaks to her as though she had never left. Rattling of names, relationships and events as though they should be familiar to her. They are not.

She misses Dmitry. She does not want to miss Dmitry. She pushes that thought away before it can even fully form in her mind. Dmitry doesn’t matter. Dmitry had used her. Every night they spent together, every time their hands had interlocked and every whispered word between them had been a lie. She doesn’t miss Dmitry. She just misses the night sky.

No, she isn’t mad at him for lying to her about thinking she was Anastasia. She knew that lie. She is mad at him because she is Anastasia. Everything is a complex jumble of emotions she couldn’t even begin to untie.

“You need a haircut,” says one of her sisters. (Tatiana?) She can’t even tell them apart but there she is holding up a strand of Anya’s too long hair, showing off a split end.

“Those shoes have seen their last step,” says another sister. (Olga?) Anya’s shoelaces are frayed and dirty.

“We should get you into some clean clothes,” says her mother. She looks down at Anya’s clothes, as though the thought of even touching them might give her a disease.

Still Anya Nobody wearing borrowed clothes. She wants to disappear into them. 

Every person chipping away everything comfortable and worn and known on her and stripping to this person she was still so unfamiliar with.

The moment she had with her grandmother, the other day when she had remembered some had felt so much happier and lighter. She was a person and people loved her. It had felt like everything she had wanted at the time.

People did love Anastasia but now Anya is struggling with the attention.

Is it rude to barge back into a family eleven years later and announce you were alive and then completely disappear again? What had she come here for? She still doesn’t know. New York pulled her heart to come and she had thought she had known why, and all evidence now leads to that reason being right but now everything feels wrong. 

It’s all wrong without...

Less than twenty four hours in everyone’s company and so many tears have been shed over her already. Time, she just needs time and this persona will fit like a glove.

It’s not that being Anya has ever felt completely right either.

She is scrubbed clean, painted, stuffed in a large dress and made ready to be paraded around. A press announcement is made about her being found. She sits with a therapist for fifteen minutes to determine her level of trauma. (Anya hasn’t been able to process anything, let alone this new trauma in her life.) Flashes of light in her face as her photo is taken, a portrait of a young woman returned to the loving bosom of her family. She smiles and expresses her gratitude and love whenever a reporter asks her a question. Mostly her father stands at her side and squeezes her arm when she’s asked a question. She thinks it’s meant to be protective but her brain processes it as a warning. 

Finally, she finds her brother in a back room, hidden away from the guests. Or hiding away from the guests. She does not ask, because it doesn’t feel like her place to.

Alexei seems like the safest, most comfortable option in this huge, overwhelming party. 

“What happened to the guy you came back with?” Alexei asks her, after a reasonable amount of silence between them. He fidgets as much she feels like fidgeting. At fourteen and with zero memories to remember her by, her brain only feels quiet around her brother. “Olga and Maria never date any cool guys like that.”

“You only saw him for a second,” Anya points out. Though she’s not certain when or how long he would’ve seen Dmitry at the last party. “And he’s not my boyfriend.”

“He certainly looked all…” Alexei makes a heart with his fingers and places it by his eye. She’d laugh if her heart wasn’t a shattered mess over Dmitry. “Over you.”

Dmitry is a very good actor, she knew this to be true. She wonders if he has ever felt a genuine emotion in his life. And how many stories had been the truth. (They had all felt true at the time.)

“It wasn’t over me,” Anya says, trying to keep the bitterness out of her voice. He’s fourteen and doesn’t deserve the bile she’s currently feeling. Or the horrible experiences she’s had with people in the world. “He’s in love with all the money he got for finding me.”

Alexei frowns, “No, he wasn’t.”

Boys always defend other boys, no matter the circumstance or age. 

Anya can’t stop the sigh that escapes, “When you’re older you’ll understand it more.”

“I’m not stupid, Nastya,” Alexei is all exaggerated facial expressions and rolled eyes. “I mean he didn’t take any of the reward money.”

Anya freezes. Alexei has no idea what he was talking about. “Of course he took the money.”

Dmitry needed the money. Sold any remains of his tattered soul for that money. 

“He didn’t take the money,” this time he says the words slowly as though that is her issue with understanding what he is saying. “I heard Mama and Papa talking about it. He didn’t want a dime of it. Said returning you to them was reward enough.”

Anya has no idea what to say because all of her anger and disappointment began to deflate out of her at Alexei’s words. And her brain tries to catch up to process that bit of information. 

He wouldn’t not take the money. She doesn’t know who this Dmitry would be. (Or she does and he’s the same Dmitry that slept under the stars with her.)

Of course, Alexei in all his fourteen year old boy’s glory knew exactly the right thing to say.

“You look like a fish,” he tells her. He sucks his cheeks in, making motions with his mouth like a fish. He looks ridiculous. 

Anya reaches over and cuffs him on the shoulder.

He rubs his shoulder, and stares at her in wonderment. “None of my other sisters ever hit me.”

Oh, fuck right. She is failing so hard at being a sister. At least he looks impressed by it.

Anya looks around the ballroom, she has made an appearance, even though she has been hiding with Alexei for a while now. Bonding, if anyone else comes in to ask what she is doing.

“I think Vlad said something about him going to Penn Station,” Alexei tells her, ending with a whistle and staring up at the ceiling.

Anya stares at him for a long moment, “You’re a snoop.”

“You keep my secret,” Alexei tells her and points at the door, “I’ll keep yours.”

Her heart is miles ahead of her head at this point. 

So she gives her brother a quick nod, picks up the skirts of her dress and runs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i can’t believe we only have a chapter and an epilogue left of this!!


	14. chapter 13

There was no way Anya could fit into a cab without an impressive amount of maneuvering on her part thanks to the shape and size of her gown, and she didn’t want to waste time trying to convince a limousine driver to give her a ride only for them to not be convinced. 

She was going to have to run. She thinks for a moment the last time she ran out of one of these parties- the sleek blue gown she wore and easy exit from the party, trying to escape Dmitry. Now it seems the universe was going to make her work to bring herself back to him. 

Thankfully all those years of dreaming of New York and looking at maps of them create an instinct for her as she picks up the skirts of her dress and runs. 

There’s got to be some sort of bridge between Anastasia- the memory of a girl and all she could be and Anya- the girl who had lost everything only to find herself. Her family is the most important part of Anastasia’s life and Dmitry is the most important part of Anya’s and she’s sick of living life split in two and it’s not even been a full week. 

Her feet pinch and she regrets the heels, the dress chosen for it. She regrets so many things and she needs to let go of some of it. She can feel her hair loosen and come undone from the updo it was put in. 

Anya doesn’t even know how she must look at the moment, the girl in the expensive dress running down Fifth Avenue. It’s probably not the weirdest thing to happen to people in New York but she can’t even take a moment to reflect on the ridiculousness of it all. 

Finally she arrives at one of the entrances for Penn Station and a girl with an oversized suitcase on wheels pulls it back at the last moment to avoid Anya tripping on it. 

It’s so big in here and now she’s caught with the reality that she doesn’t know where to go or to even begin to know where to look for Dmitry. 

Not wanting to get stopped she does try to slow her pace down, wondering if she should slip into Russian or French if anyone stops her so at least she just looks out of her element and not completely crazy. 

She doesn’t even know if she should stop anyone and ask, ‘hey have you seen a male around six feet tall with brown eyes and a dimple against his cheek?’ And then she just feels it. 

Something in the air or something that speaks to her own blood cells but she turns her head and sees him sitting off to the side amongst the crowd, using his suitcase as a seat as he stares up at the monitor announcing departures. 

He must feel it at the same time before he turns his head and they stare at each other for a beat. 

Dmitry recovers first, standing up. “I don’t want to be in love with someone I can’t have…” he waves his hand in the air, before it settles to push his hair back. “For the rest of my life.”

Anya gets stuck temporarily on the love part, she can’t remember the last person to say I love you was. She knows, now, her family loved her- loves her- but even they’ve failed to say it in the chaos of her return. 

Her heart beats wildly in her chest, louder than the noise surrounding her in Penn Station and she thinks it may tear a hole in her already destroyed dress. 

But she remembers to come alive again and makes her way over to Dmitry. 

“Good thing,” she announces, stepping on his suitcase, giving her to be around the same height as them. Putting them back on the equal ground they started on. “You have me.” 

Dmitry opens his mouth looking like he’s about to argue with her but she doesn’t give him the chance. She didn’t run out on her family after spending eleven years looking for them to be pushed away by the boy she loved. 

She kisses him instead, and while it’s not their first kiss, it’s certainly the most important one they’ve had to date. She hopes for other and more important ones in the future. 

He hesitates for a moment but then he’s kissing her back and she loops her arms around his neck while he grips her waist and she’s fair certain there are some people cheering around them but right now in the middle of the most populated city in the country they are the only two people that matter. 

They are both smiling when they pull away, him resting his forehead on hers. It helps keep the illusion that this is a private moment. 

Then he pulls away, his hands pressing against her cheeks, his fingers in the loose strands of her hair. 

“You look absolutely insane,” he tells her, a little bit of a laugh escaping as he does so. 

“I don’t care,” she tells him, and she doesn’t. Nothing else at this moment matters except the two of them. “I love you.” 

Anya kisses him again and he kisses her back, lifting her up off his luggage and back on the floor. Her feet hover above the ground and he stops just before they touch to twirl her around. 

She’s never expected to feel this much happiness and she has years left in her life to figure out how to make the two facets of her life work. 

For now it’s enough to be young and in love and with the person she wants most in this world.


	15. epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy birthday to my #1 cat (meaning the person, and not my actually cat who is my #1 literal cat)

There’s a thin band on Anya’s finger, slid onto it earlier the year at a courthouse in Virginia, her daughter on her hip as she said simple and binding vows. She’d wavered back and forth between whether or not she’d want a wedding, a ceremony, or to elope and if so, to have her family there. It’s difficult to do anything small with her family in attendance. Eventually she follows what her heart wants and the only witness she has is Stella, wedged between her parents. Legally, she’s not old enough to count for a witness, but the state of Virginia requires no witnesses to be present so Anya counts her anyway. 

There’s mashed carrots in Anya’s hair and some on her forehead. Her daughter thinks of her mother’s face as a canvas and food as paint. She giggles whenever she looks at her work, and Anya’s certain it’s intentional even if Stella’s not even a year old. 

Stella gasps at the end of giggle and Anya can see her mouth working out a thought. 

“Dima! Dima!” Anya calls, she’s lost track of where he is in the house. “I think it’s happening.” 

It’s not the first time she’s called him out for this reason, though she’s yet to be right. She can feel it in her bones that her first words are forthcoming. 

Dmitry appears in the kitchen, hurried despite all the false promises of before. 

Stella lights up when she sees her father, she’s generally pleased to see either of them. Dmitry’s arms wrap around Anya’s waist, pulling her back against him. 

“She wants to talk,” Anya whispers to him, as he presses a kiss against her temple. 

“I think she likes the attention she gets when she moves her mouth like that,” Dmitry counters, resting his chin on her shoulder. “Hi baby, are you running Mama through the ringer?” 

Stella giggles and she’s such a happy baby it makes Anya’s heart ache. She picks up a cheerio, and holds it between her index finger and thumb and extends it out. “Mama?” 

It takes a moment too long for Anya to process what happened, so used to it not happening the past few weeks. Once it hits her, she shrieks, causing Stella to start and shriek as well. Anya gives a little jump, turning in Dmitry’s arms, throwing her arms around him. He lifts her up as he hugs her and she frees herself when he sets her back down. 

She lifts Stella up out of her high chair, holding her close to her. “Stella, you did it!” 

Stella reaches over to pull the mashed carrots from Anya’s hair, unconcerned with the fact she just said her very first words. 

Anya refers back to the other person in the room, who would at least care as much as she did. Dmitry’s arm is around her shoulders, and his other hand strokes Stella’s face. 

“She said her first word!” 

“I know”, Dmitry responds and he sounds in awe. Stella turns her face to blow a raspberry against his palm. “I was here.” 

“She said Mama,” Anya continues, even though she knows that he was there and experienced the same exact moment she did. 

“Of course she did,” Dmitry tells her, and she can hear the smile in his voice when he speaks. “She loves you.” 

Stella reaches over, tiny hand pressed against Anya’s heart. “Mama.” 

Anya kisses her cheek, “I love you, Stell.” 

Dmitry pulls out one of the kitchen chairs so she can sit and she sets Stella down on her lap. Her daughter's brown eyes look between her mother and father, as she doesn’t know why she’s been so abruptly separated from her snack food. 

Stella sighs happily, resting her head against Anya’s shoulder. Anya does the same, resting her cheek against the top of her head. 

-

Anya always gets there long before art class gets out. If it weren’t for years of therapy, she’d sit in the back corner of the room every moment of the class, nothing gives her back more of her memories of her own childhood than watching her daughter grow up. In her own paranoia and panic, she remembers her mother’s overprotectiveness of Alexei and the sterile smell of hospital rooms. She can’t imagine what it was like for them when she disappeared.

Doesn’t want to live in that reality herself. 

The first few classes, she remains close by, familiarizing herself with the nearby coffee shop and little stores. There’s even an antique store a block over she ends up filling her time networking for Dmitry. He is grateful and bemused when she returns home. 

Sometimes Dmitry accompanies her, if he’s free, takes her to the ice cream shoppe three buildings down, his hand holding hers tight, a shared tension. She likes walking downtown with him, his arm loose around her waist. It reminds her of dozens of other downtowns they visited on their journey here. They fell in love amongst sidewalks and alleyways across the United States and it’s a privilege to have these moments with him still. 

But mostly dropping off and bringing Stella to her art class is their time. 

They have a routine, and Anya stands in the same spot every time and Stella knows to look for her. Her face lights up when she spots her and she comes running, her arms stretched out. 

Anya maneuvers picking her up, though she’s five now she doesn’t know how much longer she has before Stella is her height or taller. 

Her hands are covered in paint and she grasps paper in her hands as she wraps her arms around Anya’s neck. 

“Mama!” She places a wet kiss against her cheek. “I drew something for Papa.” 

Anya tilts her head so she can see Stella’s sketch. “It looks beautiful, he’ll be so thrilled to see it.” 

Anya’s worked at galleries, as a manager, as a curator. She’s seen some of the most famous paintings in the world up close, but nothing holds a candle to anything Stella creates. 

Stella’s been obsessed with art ever since she was little, coming into work with Anya, watching her father work on fixing old things. They’re all tied together. Like her father, it’s never been enough for Stella to simply view and appreciate art, she’s always wanted to create as well.

“Where is Papa?” Stella asks as Anya opens the car door to secure her into a car seat. 

“Home,” Anya answers, making sure she’s in there right before moving to the driver’s seat. “Making dinner.” 

“Oh,” her daughter draws the word out, and then stares back down at her drawing. “Can we have noodles?” 

“We can have whatever your father’s making,” Anya responds, and glances in the rear view mirror to see Stella pout. She’s a bit spoiled, a bit too used to getting her way but it’s hard not to. The thought of Stella feeling anything she felt at all during her childhood has replaced the nightmares she used to have. “You love your father’s cooking.” 

Stella shrugs, clearly over it. She bounces back quickly from almost everything. 

Anya can feel every bit of tension leave her body on the drive home. 

-

There’s a part of her that doesn’t expect Stella’s eighth birthday to happen. It’s ridiculous to think, she knows. It’s just she never made it past her seventh birthday with her family and that fear lives in the back of her head and she has to breathe through it until it’s 3:23 in the morning and Stella is officially eight. 

She doesn’t fall asleep until a few minutes after that, turning to sleep again Dmitry, his arms forever solid around her. 

Anya doesn’t get a chance to check Stella’s bed and verify for herself she’s still there and happy. Instead a weight jumps on her and she opens her eyes to a mass of dark blonde curls. 

“It’s my birthday!” Stella announces, wriggling in between Anya and Dmitry. 

Dmitry makes a grunt of a response and Anya yawns. 

“I know, baby,” Anya responds, wrapping her arms around her daughter and pulling her against her. “I was there?”

“On my birthday?” Stella asks, squirming in Anya’s grasp. 

“When you were born,” Dmitry says lifting his head up and kissing his daughter’s cheek. “Happy birthday Stell.” 

“Thanks,” she says and lets out a yawn. 

Anya turns her head to try to make out the time on the alarm clock but she sees a 6 and gives up. 

“You’re up early,” Anya tells her and Stella’s eyes were already closing. 

“Remembered it's my birthday and wanted cake,” Stella responds. 

“No cake yet,” Anya tells her, mostly because she still has to pick it up from the bakery. 

“It’s kay,” Stella responds. “Want sleep first.” 

“That’s why you’re my favorite child,” Dmitry tells her, causing their daughter- their only child- to giggle. 

She can feel Stella’s breathing even out against her as she falls back asleep. 

Anya’s pretty sure this family of hers- this one her and Dmitry created- is going to be just fine after all. 

She’s never felt more like herself than when she’s with the two of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for going through this journey of a universe with me. love you all


End file.
